


Just A Little Bit Longer

by Thiswillonlyhurtalittle



Category: Major Crimes (TV), The Closer
Genre: Aging, Brenda Johnson/Fritz Howard, Characters who look a lot like Edward Olmos, Charlene Johnson (The Closer), David Gabriel (The Closer), Jimmy Johnson (The Closer), Los Angeles, Moving, Multi, Sharon Raydor/Andy Flynn - Freeform, Slow Burn, So slow they might be going in reverse, Washington D.C., not quite friends, people who think too much, slightly dented people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 02:38:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 46,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4204839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thiswillonlyhurtalittle/pseuds/Thiswillonlyhurtalittle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Brenda takes a job in DC six months after Fritz dies."</p><p>Brenda. Sharon. After Major Crimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

* * *

 

 _Just a little bit longer,_   
_We'll be a little bit stronger,_   
_And just a little bit brighter, brighter._

Caitlin Crosby, "Just Another Day"

* * *

 

 

Brenda takes a job in DC six months after Fritz dies.

It takes a few months of her rattling around in the home she used to share with a man who’s now dead,  her continuing on in a job she’s never particularly cared about, her living a life that now  feels loose and ill-fitting - like a stretched out sweater that no amount of time in the dryer could ever hope to fix. But one day she wakes up and she knows. It’s time for her to go.

She takes a job with Homeland Security’s Office for State and Local Law Enforcement because it’s a good fit and she thinks could do real work there. She puts in her official notice with the District Attorney’s office and later the same day David Gabriel appears at her office door, looking sullen and bereft.

“Oh, honey. I was gonna tell you in person,” Brenda says and takes off her glasses. It was a mistake not to tell David first, the speed of gossip being what it is, Brenda sees this now. But she's also old enough to  realize that hindsight doesn’t particularly count for shit, in the end, so she doesn’t try to explain herself. “David,” she says, a little at a loss, because he just keeps standing there, silent and stricken.

This is the reason Brenda waited to tell him, part of her knows. This is why she put it off. Because there are people who will maybe be sad to see Brenda go and others for whom her departure will be inconvenient, but David is the only person this actually, genuinely hurts.

A decade spent in the city of Los Angeles and David Gabriel is the only person who’s going to mourn Brenda leaving it.

“Chief,” he finally says, his voice low and sad, and Brenda doesn’t know what to say. Stands up from her desk and opens her arms, the way her mama did when Brenda Leigh was little and being fetched from grade school.

“You’ll be just fine,” she says to him, still hugging. Doesn’t care at all that he’s left her door wide open and people are now slowing as they walk by, a half dozen of Brenda’s underlings watching them embrace.

David will be fine, Brenda knows - suspects he might even come into his own a little bit more now, with no Chief around to continually please. The real question is whether Brenda herself will be fine, but that’s none of David’s concern.

“You go on back to work now,” she finally says, pulling back and pretending to be stern. “I’m still your boss for a few more weeks and don’t think for one second I’m gonna go any easier on you.” He puts up his hands like she’s caught him in something, a small smile appearing that she suspects he doesn’t feel.

“I’m going to visit you,” he tells her, making it sound like a threat. “DC is one my favorite cities.”

“Come see me as often as you like,” she shrugs at him. “Visit so often you get sick of me.” This makes David laugh, his smile genuine now, and he hesitates only a little before she shoos him out the door.

. . .

Mike Tao waits to come by and see her until Brenda’s very last day of working for LA County. She’s packing up the last of her files, sorting them for her interim replacement, when she hears the soft knock at her door.

“Well hello, Lieutenant,” Brenda says, pleased and surprised but also a little more hollowed out for seeing him; this man, so soft spoken and kind, whose face still so painfully reminds her of some of her more unfortunate mistakes. The ones she would probably, mostly repeat if given the chance.  

“Chief,” Mike nods, and gives her a decidedly uncomfortable smile. “I’m glad you’re still here. . . I wanted to stop by earlier but we were wrapping up a case.”

“You get your man?” Brenda asks him over her glasses, a stack of files still in her hand.

“Woman,” Mike corrects her. “Well, _women_. . . It’s a bit of a long story.” Brenda nods at this because most of them are long. Some sadder than others and some more hauntingly graphic, but very rarely do they turn out to be short.

“Thank you for swingin’ by,” she smiles at him. “I’m glad I got to see you.”

“Me too,” he nods again, more awkward this time. Moves to hug her after a brief hesitation. “Cathy's always wanted to be in DC during the cherry blossom festival. Maybe one of these days we’ll finally make it.”

“We’ll all have dinner,” Brenda says and forces herself not to fidget

“Dinner,” Mike echoes, rubbing his neck. “Well, uh, good luck, Chief. . . Keep in touch.” Mike leaves, bumping into the door on the way out, and Brenda slumps down into her chair.

This day needs to be over. She has no more patience left for this peculiar pain that people more tactful than Brenda so often term ‘transitioning.’

She almost makes it through the rest of her day, almost makes it to her car in the parking garage with a heavy box awkwardly tucked under her arm, when she hear a familiar voice calling her name. “Chief Johnson!” Andy Flynn calls to her, his voice bouncing off all the concrete. “Brenda!”

Brenda stops her tired lumber but doesn’t turn around, not immediately. Not until she allows herself just a moment to brace herself for this, one last ghost of Christmas past.

“Andy,” she says, when she finally spins on her heel. Manages to plaster a fake smile on her face though she’s scraping the bottom of the well for feigned cheer.

“I’m glad I caught you,” Andy says, sounding out of breath, as if he’s been running to catch her. “I got to your office and. . .  your assistant said that you’d. . .  already left.”

“Are you alright?” she asks him, because he’s bending over slightly now, hands on his hips as he painfully sucks in air.

“Fine,” he replies, a little tersely. Then rolls his eyes and sounds self-effacing when he adds, “just… far from young.”

“That makes two of us,” Brenda smirks back. Feels the knot of anxiety she’s been carrying around uncoil a little after being able to say something, anything, that’s honest.

“This is for you,” he announces, thrusting a card toward her.

“Oh,” she says and shifts her box to the other arm before taking the envelope. Frowns that it’s now bent at the corner where he’s been gripping it.  “Thank you,” she says, a little confused as she stares down at her name written in elegant cursive. Penmanship that’s too careful and beautiful to be Flynn’s, Brenda’s sure of it after years of reading the man’s illegible scrawl.

“It’s from Sharon,” Andy says. Which  makes far more sense. “She wanted to come see you herself but she’s stuck talking with Taylor.”

“Now there’s a name I won’t miss hearing,” Brenda says, still looking down at the card as Andy gives a chuckle. “Tell Sharon I said thank you,” she says finally. “It’s real thoughtful.”

“She really wanted to give it to you in person,” Andy says, gravely now,  “she just couldn’t get away.”

“I understand,” she says slowly, feeling like maybe she’s missing a piece of the puzzle.

“I’m just glad I got it to you before you left,” Andy sighs heavily, clearly relieved. “She’d kill me if I hadn’t.”

It’s an odd thing to say about a superior officer sending him on a personal errand. An odd mission for Andy Flynn to take so very seriously. But then Brenda thinks back to Fritz’s funeral, the unrelenting treadmill of people, some tearful and some somber but almost all of them staring at Brenda. But not Andy - because Brenda _clearly_ remembers it now -  the way Andy stood so still at Sharon’s side and was the only person not staring at Brenda because Andy - Andy was staring at Sharon.

_Oh._

“Good luck, Chief,” Andy says now, after the silence has gone a little too long, Brenda’s thoughts getting away from her.

“Good luck to you too, Andy,” Brenda smiles softly. “Good luck to you and good luck to Sharon.”

Flynn tilts his head, a question passing over his face before it disappears. Before he smooths it away.  “Safe travels,” he says instead, and Brenda gives him a little wave.

Brenda sets Sharon’s card on the passenger seat of her car but doesn’t let herself open it yet. Glances at the pale blue envelope all the way home, fighting her way through traffic, and then stares at it hard once she’s arrived, the car off and the late summer heat beating down on her through tinted windows as she holds the stiff paper in both her hands.  

Her phone begins buzzing in her purse and then a second later starts to ring. It takes her a moment to find it, what with all the junk in there, but eventually she does, sliding her finger across the bottom of the screen.

“Daddy?” she asks into the phone. “Oh I’m fine, Daddy.” And then, “I guess maybe the last day of anything is always hard.”

Her daddy chats on and on, and Brenda stares at her name spelled out in black ink, the cursive ‘B’ large and embellished with a flourish.

“What’s that?” she asks, because she hasn’t been paying close enough attention, has apparently missed a question. “Did I get to see any of my friends?” she repeats. Presses her eyes shut and rests her chin on the steering wheel . “A few,” she manages and makes the words come out brightly.  “Do you remember Sharon Raydor? From Christmas dinner that one year at my work ? Well, she gave me a real nice card . . Yes, very sweet of her.”

She opens her eyes because it’s now hot in the car, too hot to be sitting here talking. Stays on the line as she grabs her purse, slides Sharon’s unopened card into one of the folder’s there, but leaves her box from work for later.

“No, Daddy,” Brenda says into the phone,  panicking now. Closes the car door hard.  “I’m fine. There’s no need for you to come out here. _Honest_. Everything is buttoned up and ready to go.”

She walks inside, empty boxes strewn everywhere and very little packed. Lets her purse drop to the floor as she leans against a wall, forehead pressed painfully to stucco.

“I just have one or two loose ends,” Brenda  goes on lying, “maybe an hour’s worth of work and then it’s all up to the movers. Okay? . . Alright. Well. I love you.”

She hangs up the call with the press of her finger but stays right where she is. Remains for a minute, face to wall,  and now remembering a second grade teacher she’d particularly loathed as a child for forcing her to stand just this way. A punishment for talking in class.

And Brenda laughs a little at the memory, tears burning her eyes. Thinks how funny it is that people go wasting timeouts on children when it’s adults who so desperately need them.

. . .

Brenda doesn’t open Sharon’s card until she’s sitting in her furnished condo in the suburb of Fairfax, Virginia, leafing through paperwork Homeland Security sent her before she’d left LA.

The condo’s on the small side, even for one person, but it’s only a temporary rental until she finds a place to buy. The sticker shock of real estate in the DC area could have been a problem, even coming from Los Angeles, but won’t be because of Fritz’s life insurance. Brenda knew he had it because they both were covered through work with a private policy to top the that one off, but a week after Fritz died Brenda had opened the letter from their insurance company and frozen, thinking there’d been a mistake. That surely that amount couldn’t be right. But then she’d phoned them, still red eyed and crying, holding the letter in the same hand as a wadded up tissue. And they’d told that, yes, that amount was correct and they’d send it through registered mail. She’d ended the call, even more confused and upset, because why hadn’t Fritz ever told her his policy was so unnecessarily big?

She’d gone back to bed then though it was barely afternoon. She was still in her pajamas anyway; unshowered and with no food in her stomach although the fridge was crammed full with stuff left from the wake. Had Fritz known, somehow, that something was wrong? Had he upped his insurance right at the end? It’s a question that stared at her even in bed, the neatly printed letter from the insurance company  wrinkled and lying on the other pillow, the one that Brenda can't bring herself to use, her head still squarely on her own side. Brenda couldn’t stand the mystery, so she’d eventually phoned again and asked - when had her husband raised his policy? Turned out that Fritz had done so  every year when given the option, as did (apparently) many of the company’s clients. And while Brenda had been relieved, she’d also scoffed at the insurance agent’s commentary - his feigned concern for her future. Could just imagine this man with a nasally voice advising Fritz that a policy _really should_ provide loved ones at least eight to ten times the deceased's annual salary. Pure decency, the agent probably told Fritz, a decision to provide for his family that would come with just a little higher premium. And Brenda’s smirked then - a petty satisfaction that quickly twisted to guilt - that this weasel of a man had gambled his company’s money on the wrong man. On a heart that turned out to be weak.

Sitting now in this condo that’s a little too small and maybe darker than she'd prefer, Brenda feels less trapped than she did back in LA. She’s frightened at the process of buying a property and frustrated that she can’t start her new job for two more weeks (the Federal hiring process being what it is), but otherwise she feels steadier. A little more herself every week.  She wakes up every morning and knows where she is, understands before she even opens her eyes that she’s going to wake up alone. And sometimes, yes, she still cries, still looks in the bathroom mirror and can’t believe that this is what _a widow_ looks like. But it’s been less than a year, she reminds herself, and tries to be kind to the panicky voice in her head. To not push herself to feel whole any faster than she's able.

Because when she thinks it about, very little of her nearly forty-nine years have been spent feeling whole, even before the man she married dropped dead.

So when Brenda finds Sharon’s unread card, leafing through a tedious policy manual on her rented leather recliner and turning a page to find the blue envelope with her name staring up at her, there’s no self-reflection to be found. She’s just happy, smiling and joyful the way she used to be when the Easter bunny came, a month’s supply of chocolate waiting for her in a brightly colored basket. She actually thought she’d lost it, having remembered throwing it in her purse while was on the phone, but then unable to find it her purse or in the car or on top of any the taped boxes stacked inside the house. She’d been a little brokenhearted then, and on the flight from LAX to Reagan National had sat in her seat with time to kill and turned that feeling over for a while in her mind.

 _Brokenhearted. Over a card. From Sharon Raydor_.

Brenda doesn’t waste time staring at this time, just tears open the envelope and begins reading it right away; rushes to read it all the way through and then goes back to read it again, slowly and carefully. The message isn’t terribly long, efficient in that way Brenda always associates with Sharon. It’s more personal than a note from colleague to colleague, softer in tone. And down in the opposite corner Brenda sees that Sharon’s written out her home address in big print.

It’s an on outdated gesture, technology being what it is, and yet it makes Brenda happy just the same. Makes her wonder, too, whether the inclusion is more a hopeful invitation or simply permission - a perfunctory social gesture to indicate that Brenda may send Sharon Christmas cards if she so desires, and if so, Sharon won’t just throw them away. It’s a silly thing to dwell on, a silly thing to fret over, the intentions of a woman she was never quite friends with and who is now thousands of miles away. Brenda tells herself this firmly and closes the card, but leaves it out on the coffee table just the same.

And three days later, when Brenda’s out doing errands and killing a bit of time shopping, she stops outside a little store that has brightly colored stationary displayed right in front. Decides to go inside because she has nothing pressing to do, no where she's supposed to be, and so stands there for ten minutes, just looking at paper products.

There’s some bright yellow stationary with white little flowers all down the sides and Brenda thinks they're adorable, but there’s also a similar pattern with pink and she can’t quite decide. She buys both because why not, and grabs a pen, too; one that’s silver and heavy and looks exactly like the kind her grandparents gave to Brenda and all three of her brothers as high school graduation presents. The clerk, a girl who looks even younger than Charlie, rings Brenda up. Slides the items into a pretty lavender bag, thanking Brenda for her purchase.

Her outing complete an hour later, she gets in the car, all the day’s bounty shoved into the trunk save the little purple bag that she puts right next to her on the passenger seat. And sitting at a long red light, waiting to turn left at a busy intersection, Brenda sneaks a glance at her pretty new stationary, her silver pen, and then thinks about Sharon’s card. The address so carefully printed inside it though everything else had been written in cursive.

_Maybe._

The light turns green and Brenda turns the corner.

. . .

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter took longer to post than I hoped since I felt absolutely compelled to go back and sprinkle a little more of the gay around. Because during the week that I was editing this LOVE WON, YOU GUYS ! ! ! ! ! ! Love totally fucking won. <3 <3

* * *

 

 _Cause she's just like the weather, can't hold her together_  
_Born from dark water, daughter of the rain and snow_  
_Cause it's burning in the bloodline_  
_It's cutting down the family tree_  
_Growing in the landscape, darling, in between you and me_

 -Florence+The Machine, "Landscape"

 

* * *

 

 

Brenda’s brother Jimmy comes down from New York barely a month after Brenda starts her job, and she frets for a while about whether or not she can ask for personal days when she’s only just begun working there.

 “So I come down Friday and leave Sunday,” Jimmy tells her over the phone. “What’s so wrong with that? You’ll go crazy if I’m there longer than three days anyway. Plus seeing each other now only requires a train ride, Brenda Leigh.”

Jimmy’s right, Brenda knows. And maybe she even could take off work, the culture of federal jobs - even ones in Homeland Security - being what they are. But the truth is, she doesn’t want to. There’s an assistant director slot open in the division she’s in and apparently it’s been open for more than a year. Brenda knows she almost has enough experience on paper to qualify for the next rung in the government ladder and she thinks if she works really hard for a year and maybe doesn’t make any enemies by being too much herself, she could slide right into that open slot.

“I’m so glad you were blessed with ambition,” Jimmy tells over drinks in a small bar in Dupont Circle. “Since you didn’t get congeniality or basic domestic abilities. Really _any_ skills that prove advantageous in making a way for one's self."

“I have skills,” Brenda huffs. The beginning of an old song and dance.

“Brenda Leigh, I have told you many times. Boobs _are not_ a skill.”

“Maybe just havin’ ‘em ain’t,” Brenda squints back him over her wine. “But how you use ‘em certainly is.” The improper grammar is partly to goad him, Jimmy only having the faintest accent anymore and forever bemoaning that Brenda has so much education and yet still sounds like such a hick. And Jimmy snorts out laughter, though Brenda can’t tell whether it’s at her retreat into her thickest Georgia drawl or because the man next to them has just given Brenda a rather obvious up-down; the universe kindly adding some italics to her last conversational point.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jimmy says to her, “since you seem to be sending out a siren song to the few straight men left in this part of the city.”

“Another skill,” Brenda posits, handing her credit card to the bartender before Jimmy has a chance to fight for the tab. They’re outside in the cool October air a few minutes later. Not cold enough yet to need a jacket but far enough into autumn that Brenda takes a cardigan with her almost everywhere she goes.

“Are you cold?” Jimmy asks her, when she pulls the little white sweater tighter around herself.

“No,” she assures him, “quite cozy.”

He makes a little noise and bumps his shoulder against hers, but doesn’t say anything else after that, his face now pensive as they stroll by the darkened windows of shop after shop.  And Brenda knows what he’s worrying about, knows what he’s too afraid to ask, because while Jimmy’s always been the tactful one and the one who’s good with people, he also happens to be the worst liar of all the Johnson brood.

She hoped it wouldn’t be a thing after she caught him staring at the wedding ring she still wears, the two of them driving from Union Station all the back to Fairfax and Jimmy sneaking glances at the glint of gold, a tiny reflection of the dying daylight against the black of Brenda’s steering wheel. But then she saw Jimmy do it again a few minutes ago, right before they left the bar, and now he’s fallen completely silent. So apparently this is a conversation they’re going to have. Sooner rather than later.

“I hate this escalator,” Brenda sighs, as they descend into Dupont's metro station. She isn’t usually scared of heights but the escalators in this particular station are an especially  long descent; an inordinate amount of vertical distance to cover and all of it spent staring down, at the looming ground. She remembers it bothering her before, too, back when she was younger and living in DC. How she always took extra care to hold on, ever wary of careless people who might jostle her off her feet.

“Yeah,” Jimmy agrees from behind her, “I didn’t even notice it when we came up this way earlier.”

“Down is worse,” Brenda pronounces, feeling her chest constrict.

“Just keep your eyes forward, honey,” Jimmy calms. “Don’t look down.”

Brenda’s about to say something snide in return, something unkind about that being common sense. But she catches herself because Jimmy’s right and she _has_ been looking straight down. There's no sense being snappy back.

A train heading in the right direction is pulling in just when get inside the station so they hustle to catch it, and then they spend the entire metro ride in silence.

“Are you okay to drive?” Jimmy asks her, once they’ve gotten to the Vienna/Fairfax station and retrieve her parked car from the lot.

“I’m fine,” she says, because she’s only had two glasses of wine and the last one was almost an hour ago.

And then they spend the entire car ride back to her condo in yet more silence.

“Do you want some ice cream?” Brenda asks, when they’re home and she’s in the kitchen throwing her purse and keys across the counter.

“What kind?” he asks back.

“Ben and Jerry’s. Half Baked, I think.” She pulls the freezer open and has to correct herself. “Nope, it’s Chubby Hubby. I musta finished the other one yesterday.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Jimmy sighs. “I’m kind of tired.”

Brenda nods at him. Nods a little too fast and a little too long, and before she’s finished she feels her eyes welling up.

“Oh, honey,” Jimmy says, gives her a sympathetic smile. Because she’s not actually crying yet but the battle to stave off the tears isn't going in her favor. “Is it because of the Chubby Hubby?”

Brenda smiles at the lame attempt at a pun even as she starts to cry, Jimmy coming over to hug her. Softly pats her back as she presses her face into his chest.

“He wasn’t even in chubby in the end,” Brenda points out, and Jimmy lets out a small laugh.

“No, he wasn’t.” And when he pulls back, he gives her the same look of concern he’s been wearing since leaving the bar. “Brenda, honey, are you okay?”

“You mean because I’m still wearin' my ring?” Brenda sniffs.

“The ring,” Jimmy nods, “but more so that you never, ever say Fritz’s name out loud anymore. Indirect references, maybe. But I haven’t heard his name leave your mouth since before you moved out here.”  And Brenda pulls back farther at this, taken off guard; startled that Jimmy has pointed out something that she apparently missed about her own behavior.

When was the last time she said Fritz’s name out loud to anyone?

“I hadn’t noticed,” Brenda admits. Sees, too, how the combination of not being able to say a dead man’s name and still wearing the ring he gave her would understandably be a cause for concern.

“I just worry,” Jimmy shrugs. “And I know you’re strong and do well with things on your own. . .  But honey, I just worry is all.” And then Brenda starts to tear up all over again because Jimmy has to know that in this moment he sounds _just_ like their mama.

“Things weren’t great between us,” Brenda admits, “when Fritz died.”

“You were in the middle of a fight?” Jimmy asks, softly now.

“Not exactly. He was thinking about leaving the FBI. Maybe joining a division of the LAPD.” Brenda crosses her arms under her chest and hugs herself as she tells him, “we’d already been strugglin’ a bit, and then the idea of him being a cop after I’d gone to work for the DA’s office. . . It didn’t go over well.”

“Everyone fights,” Jimmy tells her. “Frank and I fight all the time.”

“I know it's normal,” Brenda says, but even as the words come out of her mouth, she knows that it isn’t quite right. That this wasn’t just a fight over her leaving her shoes for Fritz to trip over or him eating the very last Kit Kat she’d safely squirreled away. This was the latest, biggest problem in a year that had already been painful for their marriage.

“I’m sure it just feels worse because you didn’t get to fight your way to the other side of the hill,” Jimmy offers, frowning in a way that makes him look a lot like their daddy.

“Ya know it’s real odd that you’re so fond of battle metaphors,” Brenda murmurs. "Considering."

“Brenda, my being gay means that I’ve sworn off sex with women. Not that I’ve sworn off being _southern_.” The sternness with which Jimmy says it sends Brenda into giggles, still delighted that this isn’t some big, painful secret her brother is trying to keep. At least, not from her, not anymore.

“You wonna get in our pajamas and watch a movie?” she asks him, the urgency of her upset evaporating.

“Oh, let’s!” Jimmy beams. “Maybe _The Way We Were_? Or _An Affair to Remember_ ?”

“And to think you ever tried to keep all that gay tucked away in the closet,” Brenda shakes her head while Jimmy tilts his in agreement.

“That certainly was an awkward period,” Jimmy sighs.

Brenda whistles long and low, “that lasted five and a half decades.”

The rest of the weekend passes too quickly and Sunday morning Brenda sleeps in late, waking up to the intoxicating smell of bacon. The familiar sound of things sizzling promisingly in pans.

“You deflowered my virginal kitchen,” Brenda tsks at her brother, hands on her hips. Her gleeful smile belying the feigned irritation.

“Someone had to,” Jimmy says. “Not like you’re ever gonna do any cookin’ in here.”

“Careful,” Brenda warns him. Pours herself a cup of coffee and greedily stares at the French toast cooking in a big pan that she doesn’t even remember owning. “You dropped two g’s in that sentence. You’re gonna go back to New York and all your little friends are gonna judge you.”

“Lord have mercy on my poor Yankee soul,” Jimmy declares, smiling his cheesiest smile for Brenda. “Speaking of friends,” he goes on, “you still talk to anyone back in LA?”

“I believe it was you, dear brother, who pointed out that I’ve never been the most congenial.” Brenda tries to make it come out lighthearted but she suspects it just sounds self-conscious and kind of pathetic.

“Are you trying to tell me that you don’t talk with _anyone_ from the city you lived in for ten years?”

“I talk with David,” Brenda allows, snatching a piece of bacon from the pan. It’s a stupid move because the grease unsurprisingly burns her fingers,  Brenda tossing it back in as Jimmy watches her, unphased.

“David?”

“David Gabriel.”

“Oh, right,” Jimmy says, plating their French toast. “The little minion of yours who followed you to the DA’s office. The . . . the, uh, -”

“The black guy,” Brenda supplies for him, smirking a little. “You can say it, Jimmy. It’s a descriptor. Like ‘my big gay brother.’ “

“Or ‘my shrew of a sister’.”

“Anyhow,” Brenda glares at him, snatching her plate away. “I still talk to David."

“He’s cute,” Jimmy raises his eyebrows. “He single? Ready to mingle?”

“ _Dear_ _lord_. No!” Brenda hollers.

“Sorry,” Jimmy offers, semi-sincerely. “It was only a joke, Bren. Didn’t mean to bring up a touchy subject.”

“It ain’t about me dating,” Brenda shakes her head. “I just think of David as another little brother, that’s all.”

There was a period there where Brenda worried about the other side of the equation, it’s true. Because she knows from personal experience that hero worship can spin out in a few different ways, and one of them ends up with someone falling for the person they look up to, the way Brenda so very regrettably fell for Will Pope. She was pretty relieved when it became clear that David would rather run naked down Hollywood Boulevard  than hear anything that remotely had to do with his boss's romantic life.

“But still,” Jimmy says, sitting down at her dining table and putting a paper towel in his lap. “You talk to David? Your little brother from another mother?”

“Please, honey. Don’t try to be hip,” Brenda pleads, sitting heavily across from him. Pops an entire piece of bacon in her mouth. “I believe you already promised Charlie that you wouldn’t say stuff like that anymore.” Jimmy frowns, his wrinkles even more pronounced now, and Brenda smirks back at him, adding, “yes, David and I talk. A lot, actually.”

“Good,” Jimmy says, forking a piece of syrupy toast and looking relieved.

“I’m not a hermit, you know.”

“I didn’t say you were, Brenda Leigh.”

“Jimmy,” she says, serious now. “I really am okay.”

“I believe you,” he says eventually, staring hard at Brenda. “But I had to make sure for myself because it’s my job. Forgive me that, baby sister.”

“I do,” Brenda smiles. “You’re the only big gay brother I’ve got.”

“Damn right,” Jimmy pronounces. Full blown native drawl.

“Hey,” Brenda stops suddenly, when they’re both standing in the kitchen. Jimmy cleaning despite that he cooked and Brenda not even pretending to help him. “You made French toast. You only ever make French toast when you’re about to give bad news.”

“Now you see,” Jimmy says, scrubbing a stubborn spot off a pan. “This is why you made such a good cop.”

“You’re going back early,” Brenda pouts. Sticks her wide bottom lip out for effect.

“I am,” Jimmy confirms. He was supposed to stay until evening, then take a late train back to New York. But he came down alone and she’s sure he’s already missing Frank. "You aren’t mad?” he asks, sounding a little sheepish.

“No,” Brenda chuckles. It could be salt in the wound, the idea that her brother has a partner he’s been with for decades and yet still misses after barely two days. But instead it just makes Brenda happy. Relieved that Jimmy's so content in his domestic life. “But at least let me drive you back to Union Station, alright?”

“You sure?”

“Of course,” Brenda assures. "There  won’t be much traffic on a Sunday. And if I’m wrong about that then we’ll just have more time to visit, won't we?”

It’s one of those rare occasions when Brenda knows she said just the right thing, because when Jimmy looks at her over the pile of dirty dishes, he just grins and grins.

“Well,” Brenda says in the car, “hopefully I’ll be in a bigger place soon. So next time Frank can come down with you. Maybe both of you spend an entire week here?”

“That would be nice,” Jimmy nods.

“I’m hoping to close on a place before Christmas. Maybe fly Charlie out if she’s not too busy.”

“She’d love that.”

“Me too,” Brenda sighs, a little wistful.

“Hey,” Jimmy says to her, “do you ever talk to that woman from your old job?”

“Andrea Hobbs?” Brenda puzzles.

“No,” Jimmy shakes his head. “The one from the LAPD. The one with that _great_ auburn hair.”

“Sharon,” Brenda supplies. “Sharon Raydor.”

“Sharon!” Jimmy shouts in recognition. “Do you still talk to Sharon?”

“Umm,”  Brenda begins.

“So that’s a ‘no’.”

“She gave me a card when I left my job in LA,” Brenda tells him. “It had her address, so I sent her a little note maybe a month after I moved here.”

“And?”

“And I never heard back,” Brenda shrugs, trying harder than necessary to sound casual. Like the silence didn't hurt. “She took over my job at Major Crimes when I left there. So I’m sure she’s. . . very busy. Plus she’s been fostering a teenage boy. I would imagine her life is rather full these days.”

“Maybe you should send her another note,” Jimmy tells her, studiously looking out the window as they steadily creep toward Union Station.

“Oh?” And then she listens hard as Jimmy hesitates for a few moments. Hears him draw in a deep breath before he looks back at her, his face softer and maybe pained.

“She sent some really lovely flowers to the house for you, after Fritz’s heart attack,” he tells her. “Everyone else sent them directly to the funeral home or to the church, but Sharon sent this beautiful arrangement of wild flowers right to your house.”

“She did?” Brenda asks, almost a whisper. Because it’s a painful time to remember but also just a period that’s a blur inside her head. Difficult to recall much detail of anything, save parts of the funeral itself. All those people quietly watching Brenda shattering into smaller and smaller pieces over the course of an hour and a half.

Jimmy and Frank had stepped right off the plane and handled all of the funeral arrangements, handled all the logistics and signed for all the flowers. Her daddy poking his head into Brenda’s bedroom every few hours to bring her food she didn't eat while she cried and cried and cried.

“The flowers came with a card,” Jimmy tells her now. “A sealed one. I knew you weren’t in any condition to read it, so I had Charlie put it and a few others in your memory box. . . For later.”

“I didn’t know,” Brenda says, deep in thought now. Has to focus real hard on navigating the traffic around Union Station with all the other things now competing in her head.

She thinks she might remember those flowers. Recalls blindly stumbling down the hall to her bathroom a few times and stopping to look at the pink and orange petals, touching her fingers softly to the blooms. If she thought anything about them at all besides that they were pretty, it was to assume that Jimmy or Frank had picked them up for her. All of the other condolence flowers she was sent we're these somber bunches of lilies and other, more hideous white ones. Ungodly sprays of gifted baby’s-breath on every horizontal surface, at the service.

“I just thought it was a sweet thing to do,” Jimmy tells her now. “And I remembered Mama going on and on about how nice it was to meet your friend from work. That one Christmas, a few years back.”

“My friend Sharon,” Brenda murmurs. A memory Jimmy can't understand and one that Brenda suddenly wants to selfishly guard from view.

“Well. Thanks for the ride, Brenda Leigh,” Jimmy says, smiling brightly. They’ve already been parked for about a minute now and they can’t linger here any longer.

“Come back soon,” Brenda tells him. Leans over in her seat to hug him and holds on longer than she usually does.

“Getting clingy in your old age?” Jimmy teases her, unlocking his door.

“No,” Brenda smiles softly. “Just belatedly grateful for what I have.”

There are two cars now angrily honking behind them, but Jimmy’s been a New Yorker for a while now and doesn’t particularly give a damn about expressions of outrage from strangers.

So that makes two of them, then.

“Love you, Bren,” Jimmy leans in, kisses her forehead. “Call you when I’m home. Bye-bye now.”

. . .

Brenda goes home to Atlanta for Thanksgiving.

The holiday’s complete chaos, the way all holidays now are with her family, her mama no longer around to perform the fruitless task of issuing orders to Bobby and Clay Junior. It’s practically like herding cats, anyway - with or without her mama there to lend an occasional stern word.

Jimmy doesn't make the trip this time, blaming it on something with his work. But Brenda knows that it’s a strain on Jimmy and Frank to have to do a Johnson Thanksgiving on top of a Johnson Christmas. Spend two consecutive holidays being less than honest (with some but not all of Brenda’s family) when it comes to who they are and how they live their lives.

Brenda used to find it pretty exhausting herself.  Back when she was a little younger, her life a little fuller, still plenty of things left to lie about.

“I’m not sure why they think it matters anymore,” her daddy says, surprising everyone. "The only people in the family who don’t know about Jimmy and Frank are the ones who are too deaf or too senile to figure it out.”

“Maybe you should tell Uncle Jimmy that,” Charlie says, barely suppressing her laughter. “I think he, uh, would kinda appreciate that. Coming from you.”

Brenda just bites her lip and turns on heel, shoulders shaking with laughter as she walks out of the living room and into the kitchen.

“Talk about Christmas miracles coming early,” Charlie says, having followed her.

“Well,” Brenda laughs even harder, “I think it was the worst kept secret in the world, so. . . “

“God, Aunt Brenda,” Charlie sighs, her smile turning into a strained expression. “I’m so glad you’re here. It’s always weird around here at holidays. . . without Grandma.”

“I know,” Brenda agrees with her own sigh, and wraps her arm loosely around Charlie.

“Sorry if that was shitty and selfish,” Charlie says after a beat. “Talking about Grandma when now. . .”

“It’s okay,” Brenda spares Charlie from saying it. Maybe spares herself, too. Runs her fingers through Charlie’s long ponytail and feels her niece melt into her, surprisingly pliant. “How’s your semester goin', anyway?”

“Finals start in a week,” Charlie groans. Puts her head on Brenda’s shoulder. “I’ve got the stuff for most of my classes under control but my statistics class is _a nightmare_.”

“I could help you,” Brenda offers, “I had to take a ton of stat classes. Ya know, back in the Dark Ages.”

“Ugh,” Charlie groans again and Brenda gives her the side-eye. “No offense, Aunt Brenda, but struggling with something while my genius aunt tries to tutor me is not what I’d consider productive or helpful.”

“No offense taken,” Brenda says. “Since you called me a genius.”

Brenda makes them both hot chocolate, the kitchen smelling of tantalizing things that aren’t nearly ready yet, and then they go into the empty formal dining room, both of them sitting down at the long table there. Charlie pulls out some textbooks from a backpack draped over a chair, the sound of a television blaring a football game now steadily drifting in from the den.

“I meant to ask you,” Brenda begins, running her finger across the edge of the dark wooden table. “When does your spring semester start?”

“Second week of January, I think,” Charlie says, staring into a thick statistics book. “Why?”

“Well. I was thinkin' maybe I could fly you out to DC after Christmas? Spend your New Year’s with me, in our great nation’s capital city?”

“Seriously?” Charlie’s eyes go wide as she finally looks up. The pencil she’s been steadily twirling now stilling in her hand.

“If you want to,” Brenda says. Holds her breath and stares into Charlie’s blinking eyes.

“That’d be _so_ cool!” Charlie beams, and Brenda starts to smile wide, too.

“Good,” Brenda says and closes one eye as she admits, “ ‘cause I kind of already bought your flight.”

“So cool,” Charlie says again. “That’s such an awesome Christmas present! _Thank you._ ”

“Oh, that’s not your Christmas present,” Brenda hurries to tell her. “You comin' up there is- Well, that’s more a present to me than anything.”

“Aunt Brenda,” Charlie says, uncharacteristically grave now, “you’ve already done enough for me.”

She knows that Charlie still feels a little guilty that Brenda’s helping her with the cost of tuition, but the thing of it is that Charlie worked so hard to get her grades up at the end of high school. Hard enough to get into Georgia Tech and take classes part time on top of working, and then made good enough grades there to transfer to Davidson College.

“It’s just such an expensive school,” Bobby fretted over the phone, right before Fritz had died.

And then Brenda’s universe got turned on its side. And that was unfortunate, yes, but at least Brenda was able to help both of their families in ways that they needed. Like Charlie getting the education she deserves and Fritz’s sister Claire being able to own her own ‘holistic healing studio’ rather than just running someone else’s. And if all of that makes Brenda feel a little less like the insurance is blood money. . . Well, then there’s that, too.

“Charlene,” Brenda tells her now, “all I’ve done is help you to navigate a tragically broken system of higher education.”

“Please don’t go getting all political,” Charlie rolls her eyes. “It makes you sound like those annoying people who are, like, always talking about what they just heard on Rachel Maddow or NPR, or whatever.”

Brenda snickers into her mug of cocoa because the kid does have a point. “I’ll do my best,” she winks and Charlie goes back to studying.

A minute later a chorus of male voices shouting various shades of obscenities rings out through the house, and Brenda looks across the table in askance. “I should have warned you,” Charlies says, not looking up as she thoughtfully turns a page, “the Bulldogs are taking extra care to suck balls this year.  So be ready for everyone to be grumpier than usual after the game.”

“Great,” Brenda mutters, her cocoa now gone and several hours stretching out before she gets to eat any pie.

“Welcome home ,” Charlie dryly offers. Salutes Brenda with her pencil as even as her eyes narrow, focused on a problem in front of her.

. . .

Brenda closes on a condo in the historic section of Alexandria two weeks before Christmas. Splits every waking moment after that between organizing her second move of the year and working late in her small, beige office at Homeland Security's Nebraska Avenue Complex. Right up until it's time for her to go back to Atlanta for Christmas.

By the time she gets back to DC after the holiday, she's tired and happy to be off. Excited for Charlie to come into town in just two days, but mostly just relieved to be moved in. Relieved to be able to sleep late and not have to set an alarm.

"It's raining here," Jimmy tells her. He's calling using that FaceTime thingy that David and Charlie make her use too. And although Brenda resents him a little for his insistence on it - her older brother who's always been so much more technically savvy than she is- she doesn't complain because it means she gets to see his handsome face.

"Here, too," she sighs because been it's too warm for snow, hovering in the forties from Virginia all the way up to New York. "So much for the snow-covered streets Charlie was hoping for."

"She'll have fun," Jimmy assures.

"Of course she will," Brenda deadpans. "I'll make her."

They both laugh, beginning to talk excitedly about her plans with Charlie, but then Jimmy stops mid-sentence and says, “wait, a sec. You haven’t given me the grand tour of your new place yet. I want the grand tour!”

“You’ve already seen the pictures,” Brenda points out. “It’s not like it’s any different now.”

She’d showed Jimmy and Frank when they were all in Atlanta for Christmas, Brenda slowly struggling to pull up the images on her phone over dinner at the cute little hotel Jimmy and Frank always stay at when they’re in town. “Dear lord, woman,” Jimmy had hissed after several minutes. “Just hand me the damned phone.”

And she’d been treated to her daddy’s commentary, too. Had made the mistake of leaving the contract out where he could see it and heard him swear when he saw the listing price, down at the bottom of the page. “For _an apartment_ , Brenda Leigh?” he’d demanded, sounding outraged.

“A condo, Daddy,” she'd corrected.

“Same thing,” he’d shrugged, muttering as he walked away, “not sure how the folks in that town live with themselves. Paying prices like that for places that don't even have a yard.”

Brenda still has just enough Georgia in her to recognize that her daddy had a point, but she's also spent more than enough time in big cities to know that fully renovated, two-bedroom condos in mid-century buildings are not to be shunned. Even more so if they’re close enough to a metro station as to be convenient but far enough from main thoroughfares as to still feel warm and charming.

“Are you really not going to show off your new place?” Jimmy asks her now. “Not even a little?”

So she does. Carts her iPad through the living room and then the kitchen. Pans it over the little den she’s going to use as a home office and then takes it into the guest bedroom and the guest bath before finally taking it with her into her bedroom, flopping down on her bed.

“It’s beautiful,” Jimmy pronounces.

“I like it,” Brenda smiles at him, iPad propped on her belly.

And Jimmy smiles back, but it’s a phony one now. His brown eyes looking back at Brenda in a way that's clearly pained.

“What’s wrong?” she asks without preamble. Because this is just the way they do things now.

“The rain,” he says. “It always makes me think of Mama.”

“Me, too,” she sighs. Because their mother was inventive in many ways, but never more so than when it poured for days on end and she had to come up with games to keep her four rambunctious children from destroying her carefully maintained home. “Rainy days with her were always the best.”

Behind Jimmy, Brenda hears a door open and then close. Sees a brief flash of Frank’s face, tight and clearly ticked off, as he walks behind Jimmy without making eye contact.

So not just the rain, then.

“Everything else alright?” Brenda asks gently, and Jimmy shakes his head at her.

“Holidays are hard,” he simply says. Looks off to something beyond his computer, beyond Brenda, after that.

And Brenda does feel bad for her brother. Certainly wishes things were easier with their family. But the reality is that things are still so hard because Jimmy forces them to be. Puts himself and the person he loves through absolute hell several times a year, and for what? To spare the sensibilities of a handful of aged, unrepentant bigots they happen to share a genetic relationship with?

But it isn’t Brenda’s life or Brenda’s partner. Certainly isn’t her mistake to fix. So she stares back at her brother’s sullen face. Traces her finger along the side of the screen where he can still see it and then, on a whim, makes the ridiculous fish face that always made him hoot laughter when they were kids.

“And to think I told you that you don't have any skills,” Jimmy guffaws.

“I know,” Brenda preens. “I shall await your retraction in print, kind sir.”

. . .

The temperature drops like a stone right before Charlie arrives, and though Brenda mentally bemoans that this will make sightseeing outside a little less pleasant, she takes heart in the idea that Charlie will probably get her wish for snow.

“You’re witnessing our first snowfall of the year, I will have you know,” Brenda tells her as they walk through Old Town Alexandria. She picked Charlie up at Reagan a few hours earlier, her luggage still sitting in Brenda’s car, and it’s too late to do much of anything tonight. But Brenda’s still excited to at least show off her new neighborhood. Just a little.

“Aunt Brenda,” Charlie breathes out heavily.  Stops in her tracks to look down the sloped street that runs right down to the Potomac, the water only a hundred yards away. The street lamps are still decorated for Christmas and the sidewalks now covered with the thinnest dusting of snow . “It’s _so_ pretty here.”

“It is,” Brenda agrees.

It’s a kind of beauty that still catches Brenda off guard sometimes, having lived for years in a desert city. Because, yes, parts of LA could be pretty. Parts of LA could be alluring and inspiring and captivating. But not like this. Not in a way that is so beautiful - sometimes _so heartbreakingly beautiful_ \- that Brenda feels her breath catch unexpectedly in her chest, just looking down her own street.

“So,” Brenda says, after they’ve stood staring for a while and her nose now burns from the cold. “What would you like to do now?”

“Watch Netflix in our pajamas? Eat ice cream straight from the carton?”

“Honey,” Brenda smiles, tucking Charlie’s hand into hers. “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

They stay up way too late and then sleep in way too late, and when Brenda finally drags herself out of bed the next morning, Charlie’s standing in front of her closed fridge.

“You know that to get to the food you have to open that, right?” Brenda asks her. A little mean, this early in the day, but then she hasn’t had any coffee yet.

Charlie tosses a glare over her shoulder but doesn’t move from where she stands. So Brenda walks up behind her to see what she’s so busy looking at.

“I remember her,” Charlie says, tapping her finger against something on the fridge, and Brenda realizes she’s pointing to the pictures of Sharon and Rusty that Brenda has stuck there, under a magnet.

They’re the kind of photos that you get from those little photo booths people sometimes rent for parties. And Brenda’s not sure where Rusty and Sharon are at (maybe with Sharon’s family somewhere?), but Rusty’s making funny faces in all four of the pictures and in the last one Sharon is too. Kind of. It’s silly for Sharon, anyway.

“She sent that to me inside a Christmas card,” Brenda tells her. “Well, it had a note from her son Rusty on the back. So maybe he threw it in last minute without her knowin’ ? Who knows.” Brenda shrugs like she hasn’t thought about it a lot. Like she hasn’t stared at that last silly photo a dozen times and wondered whether Sharon herself meant for Brenda to have it, sealing it inside that lovely little Christmas card Brenda had waited for with hopeful anticipation. “And you said you remember her from somewhere?” Brenda asks Charlie, belatedly. After she’s caught herself staring at that last photo again.

“From the funeral,” Charlie says, lifting one shoulder. As if she has to apologize to her aunt just for having the memory.

Brenda pats her sweetly to let her know that it’s okay, that there’s no need. Pulls open the cabinet where the coffee is and asks, “so she was nice to you?”

“Yeah. I mean. . . we didn’t really talk that long or anything. I ran into her in the bathroom before I went up to speak.” Brenda hears Charlie shift on her feet, obviously uncomfortable, and then, “I’d, like, cried my mascara into a mess even though it was supposed to be waterproof. So she went and got her makeup bag out of her purse. Helped me fix it.”

“Well. That _is_ sweet,” Brenda whispers, closing the cabinet. Starts the coffee maker with a press of few buttons and then watches the caffeine slowly drip, drip, drip into the pot.

“She’s pretty,” Charlie pronounces, still looking at the pictures. Says it in that vaguely surprised way young people so often have when they realize someone older than thirty has managed to remain attractive.

“Yeah,” Brenda says, glancing at the pictures again. “Very.” But then she shakes the thought out of her head, leans over the counter with her chin on her arms as she stares impatiently at the pot that’s only just begun to fill.

“You know that to get to the coffee you have to pour it first, right?” Charlie asks pointedly, and Brenda grumbles, tired and agitated.

“Sometimes I wish you weren’t so smart,” Brenda mumbles into her arm.

“Yeah,” Charlie says, sounding oddly reflective, “me too.”

. . .

When Charlie leaves, Brenda’s bank account is a little lighter, her closet a little fuller, and her new, spacious condo a little more empty feeling. It’s been a long string of guest and holidays, after all. Several months of frantic activity that are now calming down. Settling, finally, into a more normal pace of life.

But Brenda tries not to let herself dwell on what’s no longer there.  Works long hours on project after project for her division. Runs her errands. Pays her bills. Returns calls from family promptly, no matter what kind of mood she's in or what’s about to be on television. Rarely even gets lost anymore, driving ever more confidently in an area so replete with one-way streets. And if sometimes life feels a little flatter, a little like a sitcom that's long ago run its course, she tells herself that this what happens when one finally settles into an adult life. That it’s more than enough to have a job she likes and be able to sleep soundly almost every single night.

It’s late March when David emails to say he might be coming out in June for a conference, but he sends her the email in the middle of a work day and she doesn’t have time to answer it before she leaves for home. Trudges through four meetings and her never ending stream of emails, the little window in her office steadily pelted by freezing rain.

It’s been an unusually warm winter and yet now that it’s so close to the changing of seasons, the promise of lush greens and reborn flowers just around the corner, the temperature has dropped and stayed there, half the Eastern seaboard presently punished with one last round of sleet and ice and rain. When Brenda finally leaves work for the day, following the slow snake of traffic out of the District and into Virginia, she frowns at the long line of lit up brake lights. Resents winter for stubbornly clinging to that which it’s necessarily bound by time and earth to lose.

“Did you mean to decline my Facetime?” David accuses, over the phone. She hasn’t responded to his email yet and was just about to call him, phone in hand, when it buzzed to life with his ringtone. And it'd startled Brenda, so she almost dropped her phone, frantically pushing at icons once she’d caught it in her hand.

“No,” she says, leaning on the frame of her bedroom door. She’s just gotten home and hasn’t even had time to change yet.  “I just hit the wrong little button thingy.”

“They’re _color-coded_ ,” David points out. “Red and green!”

“I know, ” Brenda says, agitated but also a tiny bit amused. Because David never, ever spoke to her this way, back when she was still his boss.

“Do you want me to FaceTime you again?” he asks, and Brenda wonders if that sentence is grammatically correct. Isn’t that word a noun and not a verb?

“No,” she groans. “Can we just talk. Like this. Normally. Please?”

“Okay,” he laughs. “Did you get my email about the conference in DC?”

“I did,” Brenda grins, nodding to herself. “And I’m so happy to hear that.”

“I’ll have to see if the funding goes through first."

“Keep me posted,” she says. Tugs off one shoe with a grunt. “I know the DA’s office isn’t as stingy as Pope with travel funds, but either way, you’re welcome to stay here if you’d like to.”

“Speaking of Pope,” David drawls, in that way he always does when he thinks he has big news to share.

Brenda groans into the phone. “Can we not?” she asks, pulling off the other shoe and watching it drop. “Speak of Will, I mean.”

“He’s stepping down,” David tells her, and Brenda feels herself start to smirk.

“You happen to know who’s holdin’ the gun to his dead?” Brenda quips. “ ‘cause I’d _love_ to know who I should address the flowers to.”

“Not a gun,” David says, “a new job. Something by appointment of the governor. Big title, big salary." He pauses for a moment and then adds, “it hasn’t been announced yet but it’s not exactly a secret either.”

“A gubernatorial appointment,” Brenda repeats, her tone sounding harsh even to her own ears.

And Brenda shouldn’t be surprised by Will’s ascension. Shouldn’t be so startled and angry that he’s slithered his way to an even more important job when people with way more merit and certainly more integrity are rotting away under the LAPD promotion freeze that Will personally maintained as Chief of Police.

But she is. _So angry_. Belatedly and maybe selfishly so, because lord knows Will Pope took credit for every single one of Brenda’s victories in Major Crimes only to leave her twisting on the line later.

“Yeah,” David sighs. “And isn’t surprising. But _still._ Isn’t that some shit?”

“Some shit,” Brenda repeats, distracted now. And then goes completely silent on the line.

“Chief?” David prompts her a few seconds later. “You still there?”

“Yeah, honey,” Brenda says, making her voice sound bright in a way that almost hurts now to produce. “Just reading a work email that came through.”

“Something important?” David asks her. Because this is the funny thing about lies, the fact that the framework for so many of them are built by the very hands of the people who are going to end up receiving the brunt of the falsehood.

“Yeah,” Brenda says, sounding regretful. “I think I better hang up so I can reply.”

“Okay. Well. I’ll be here if you call back later.”

“Alright,” Brenda says."Bye-bye now.”

She ends the call and closes her eyes because she’s just so filled with rage she can’t even stand it. So angry that Will Pope has built his success on the back of Brenda’s own work and then on her very public humiliation. Used Brenda to advance his own career in so many ways, and because Brenda _allowed_ _it_. She knows she allowed it for so damned long.

And she brought it on herself to begin with, really. With that stupid, reckless affair she had with him, back before LA; chasing a married man who had no intention of ever leaving his wife. Not for her, at least. And this is the kind of sick, masochistic thing that Brenda has always done, she realizes now. Because it’s easy to blame her messy life on her professional workload and her continual pursuit of challenging, energy-draining jobs.  But looking back at her life as a whole, Brenda is so upset with herself - so horribly _embarrassed_ and _ashamed_ of herself -because she sees that her problem, her real, honest-to-God problem wasn't the work.

Her problem is that she spent almost her entire adult life chasing people she knew she couldn’t and shouldn’t have.

It’s why she made Fritz  wait so long for her to make up her mind, made him wait and wait until _finally_ she was ready. Because she never had to chase Fritz; he was always there, too ready and too willing. And then, after they were actually married, the way she sometimes pushed him away and picked stupid, petty fights. Just to cause a bit of friction. To feel a little burn.

And Brenda is so sick with herself over it, so horribly sick with herself now, and she wants to leave the house because she feels suddenly panicky and claustrophobic even under the vaulted ceilings of her comfortably furnished condo. But it’s still raining and she can’t go out in this kind of weather, so instead she goes into her little office and tells herself that she can just buckle down and maybe do some work. But she sits down right at her desk and there, dead center, is a short letter that she’s been writing to Sharon Raydor. A note she’s been writing and rewriting for more than a week, thinking about what words to say even those it’s just this stupid, inconsequential thing she's been writing to a woman who so rarely writes her back. A  woman with a demanding job and a family and a teenager and now, probably, a boyfriend _._ A woman who likely has no real interest in friendship with Brenda anyway, because it’s not like Sharon has _ever_ picked up the phone to call Brenda. Not even once.

So Brenda crumples the letter up into a compact ball and tosses it right into the little beige trashcan that's by her desk, telling herself that this whole thing with writing Sharon has been another one of her immature, futile chases. Because when Brenda lived in LA, she and Sharon were never quite friends. They were never, ever quite friends. And staring now into her tiny trashcan in her office, Brenda decides that as of this very moment, she is done with going around, stuffing her life full of never-quite's.

Jimmy calls her hours later, when Brenda’s spent of all of her anger. She’s exhausted now, sad, and washing her face for bed.

It’s another one of those stupid FaceTime calls and Brenda doesn’t have it in her, but it’s really late so she just answers it. Knows she can cite the hour and end it quick.

“You alright?” Jimmy asks her, before he even says hello. Watches her brother’s face fill with concern, quite understandably, because Brenda can clearly see the woman reflected back in that smaller image in the corner. Sees for herself that her eyes are still red from crying and the rest of her face just looks raw and tired and old.

“I hate the rain,” she tells him.

It’s the truth. She’s sitting on the edge of her bed now, listening to it continue to fall,  and she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to sleep tonight with that sound beating so very quietly against her window.  

But truth or not, Brenda’s pretty sure  Jimmy can take one look at her right now and see plain as day that his sister is a liar. That Brenda, in her heart, is just the worst kind of liar.

“Yeah,” her brother says and tilts his head. Gives her a small, sad smile. “Rain's the worst.”

. . .

 


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

_Been talkin' 'bout the way things change._  
_And my family lives in a different state._  
_If you don't know what to make of this,_  
_then we will not relate._

  
  - The Head and the Heart, "Rivers and Roads"

* * *

 

It’s late in the work day, a quarter past four, when Brenda’s boss Ed knocks on her office door, sticks his head in.

Brenda enjoys talking with Ed and she’s learned a lot from him in the three years she's spent as the Assistant Director of their division of Office of State and Local Law Enforcement. But she’s a little worried when he appears so close to the end of the day. An unavoidable part of Ed’s job as Director is having to sometimes knock on Brenda’s door and give her bad news.

“Can I steal a few minutes of my favorite Assistant Director’s time?” Ed asks her, and Brenda relaxes. Can tell by the slight grin on his face and the fact that he’s carted his favorite blue coffee mug with him, down the hall and into her office, that he isn’t here because of something pressing. Isn’t about to bemoan that something they worked on has been kicked back to them by the Assistant Secretary, apologize that he needs her to sit in on a three-hour meeting that starts at nine am tomorrow.

“Well,” Brenda says, “Seein’ as how I’m your _only_ Assistant Director.”

But she chuckles  at his corny joke anyway because it’s the kind her daddy would tell. Smiles genuinely and offers Ed Castillio a seat, because he’s a kind man. A good boss. The kind of person who works harder than he asks his staff to work. Never says ‘maybe’ when he really means ‘no’. Hangs onto an old Houston PD coffee mug that boasts the slogan _‘order through law, justice with mercy’_ , even though it’s chipped in three different places and his wife Mary has been pleading with him to throw it out for  a quarter of their forty-year marriage.

“Well, see,” Ed gestures, “if you’re the only one then you have to be my favorite. It’s definitional.”

Brenda shakes her head, still smiling. Allows them both to have a moment of levity in what has otherwise been a very trying week.

“I assume if you’re butterin’ me up, you need a favor,” she guesses.

“I do,” Ed nods, “but it’s nothing big. Just some intel on someone from the LAPD who might be applying for the open specialist slot.”

“There’s a lot of people worth hirin' there,” Brenda says. “The idiotic promotion freeze they had in place left a lot of people with no where to move up.”

“It’s ridiculous they kept that for so long,” Ed pulls a sour face. Righteously indignant on behalf of officers he’s never met. “But the LAPD’s short-sighted policies are our gain. And since our last LA acquisition worked out so well for us. . . “ And when he pauses for effect, Brenda seizes the opportunity to interrupt.

“It did work out so splendidly for y’all,” she winks. “Bein’ that I am _such_ a catch.”  

“And so good with people,” Ed deadpans. Which, really, Brenda had coming. “But, yes, it did work for us. So we’re thinking about poaching someone else from LA. Have ourselves a matching pair.”

“So do you need dirt on?” Brenda asks him, serious now. Leans back in her chair and slides her glasses to the top of her head.

“The captain who took over for you at Major Crimes. Sharon Raydor.”

And then there’s this long moment when Ed is just sitting there, quiet and blinking, waiting for Brenda to say something. But Brenda can’t. She can’t find her voice.

“Sharon Raydor?” she finally says, crossing her arms. “She’s leavin' the LAPD?”

“She’s thinking about it,” Ed replies. “So it seems.”

Brenda doesn’t say anything to this, doesn’t quite know what to think. It’s been a while now since she even heard Sharon’s name and the idea that she could be working in this building - Brenda’s building -  is impossible to process in the precious little time she’s had.

“I take it that surprises you?” Ed asks.

His face becomes impassive now. And though Ed is her friend and has been a mentor, Brenda knows that he’s a shrewd man. A former beat cop who worked the streets for fifteen years before slowly climbing the rank ladder of a law enforcement organization that overwhelmingly promoted white faces over brown ones. So she takes one look at the defensive posture she’s taken up,  the obvious body language he’s reading, and she tells herself to pull it together because this is no longer a casual chat with a sweet man who tells bad jokes just like her daddy.

“Only because Sharon’s shown real dedication to the LAPD,” Brenda says, shifting her body and dropping her arms to a more casual position. “She took over Major Crimes with, I’m told, the promise of a title bump that she never got. But she stayed. Did the work.”

“The two of you friends?” Ed asks her, and Brenda allows herself a long, hard pause.

“Not quite,” she says. “Colleagues for a while. When I met her she was head of a division of IA and, ya know. . . Other cops don’t usually go around, makin’ friends with the people in IA.”

“No,” Ed murmurs. Thoughtfully cleans a speck of something off his glasses. “Usually not.”

And Brenda knows how to sell Sharon Raydor to Ed. Knows exactly the way to heap praise on Sharon and make Ed want to pursue hiring her. But the problem is that isn’t sure if she wants to, the mere mention of Sharon’s name having caused Brenda’s stomach to tie itself in knots, and for reasons Brenda doesn’t entirely understand.

What if Sharon worked here? What if Sharon moved here?  

The idea of it makes Brenda a little sick with panic.

“Well,” Ed says,  when Brenda hasn’t said anything for a moment. And she can tell by his body language that he’s about to stand up and thank her. Walk back to his office and wonder quietly if a person his Assistant Director didn’t trip over herself to recommend is someone he wants to spend his valuable time and energy headhunting.

And Brenda lets him. Let’s him quietly click the door closed . Let’s herself make it that much harder for another woman to make a professional move away from an organization that undervalues her and has undervalued her for a long, long time.

But then she catches herself.

“Shoot,” Brenda says. Stands up so fast she bangs her shin against her desk. “ _Shoot_ ,” she moans,  a strangled cry of pain. Rubs her leg because that's going to leave a nasty bruise. She just knows it.

She limps out of her office and down the long hall to Ed’s. Because she won’t let herself put her own ridiculous insecurities in front of another person’s career. She won't be so professionally selfish and horrible and petty.

She refuses to ever let herself be anything _remotely_ like _goddamned Will Pope_.

She gives a perfunctory knock on Ed’s door but opens it a moment later. Not like he could already be in another meeting so quickly, though Brenda realizes belatedly that maybe he could be on the phone.  And Ed doesn’t say anything. Just watches with eyebrows high on his forehead as Brenda slides into his office and closes the door behind her, pressing her back against it and giving him a long, conflicted look.

“The first time I met Sharon she was investigatin' one of my officer’s use of force,” Brenda tells him. “It’s required by policy and Sharon was just doin’ her job, but I gave her a lot of grief. Pulled rank the first time I ever met her, which pretty much set the tone after that. ”

“So you two didn’t like one another?” Ed guesses.

“Sharon was investigatin’ a young detective. One I viewed as something of a protégé ,” Brenda says. Not quite an answer.

“Chief’s pet?”

“Chief’s pet,” Brenda confirms. “So, no, I didn’t take to her. I did a lot of things to make her job impossible, actually.”  Because when she looks back on it now, it’s something she’s  ashamed of, the way she handled so much of her interactions with FID.  Hampered a division that’s whole purpose is to make sure that cops who push things too far - people like Brenda - stay in check. Protect the LAPD from the public infamy of things like the Johnson Rule.

“Well. When you put it like that. . .  it sounds my Assistant Director used to be quite the jackass.” And while Ed sounds stern when he says it, Brenda can see his mouth twitch a little. Trying not to smile.

“I have done my best to become less of a. . . jackass,” she allows, slumping a bit against the door. “But yes, that statement is fairly accurate. And my point is - I guess my point is that Sharon did her job right anyway. Cleared the officer I was tryin’ to protect because he deserved to be cleared. Helped my squad - helped _me_ \- with some difficult stuff after that. Even though I was territorial and impossible to work with initially."

“You make her sound like some kind of a saint,” Ed observes, and Brenda snorts despite herself.

“Sharon is is unbendin’, fixated on the rules, and comes off in person as painfully rigid,” Brenda shoots back. “But she’s also sharp, relentless, and has more integrity than almost anyone else, back in LA.” Ed stares at her, apparently waiting for to finish, and Brenda takes a deep, fortifying breath before she charges on. “And if she’s on the market, you should go after her. Because of all the talented people in the LAPD, Sharon’s the real catch. She’s the one you should do everything to get, Ed. . . She’s the best.”

“Good to know,” Ed pronounces after a few beats. And Brenda feels a little better and a little worse for saying all of that. Takes his succinct statement as a kind dismissal, and turns to leave, fingers wrapping around the tarnished brass of the doorknob.

“And Brenda Leigh?” Ed stops her, and she turns sheepishly back to him. Perks up only at the use of the name he normally saves for when they’re all out to dinner and he’s a couple beers in. Crowded backyard BBQ’s over holiday weekends, Ed standing barefoot next to his grill and asking Brenda Leigh whether she wants a burger or a hotdog while his wife gently tsks at him that the corn is starting to burn. “Thanks for trying to be less of a jackass. Since you came to work here, I mean." And then he smiles at her, dark eyes looking particularly amused behind his oval, gray-rimmed glasses.

“Well,” Brenda manages. “Thank you for, ya know, leadin’ by example. I’m sure it helped the process along." And then she gives him a little wave goodbye before she scoots right out the door.

She goes back to her office to finish a memo she needs to send out before leaving, but it takes forever because she can’t seem to focus. Keeps inserting typos as she edits others out, can’t find the exact words she wants to use. Finally clicks send forty minutes later and hopes for the best when she rereads it tomorrow morning.  

She locks up her office and follows the dated green carpet all the way to the elevator. Jabs the call button hard enough that her nail bends painfully back and then crosses her arms over herself, standing alone on the yellowing linoleum of the elevator after the doors bump noisily shut behind her.

She takes her time walking to her car because she hasn’t been outside since this morning. Felt a little stir crazy all day, the green grass of the Homeland Security campus spreading out below her office window, patches of flowers in bloom and just out of reach.

She was offered a bigger office when she got her promotion three years ago, but one of the administrative assistants had shown it to her and Brenda had been disheartened to find that the window looked out toward the parking garage and not much else. “Is it alright if I keep the office I have?” she’d asked Ed later that same day and he’d just shrugged at her. Told her that it was her office and her choice. So she stayed right where she was.

It’s the tail end  of April now. Well enough into spring that mid-day heat can be a little unpleasant, the rainshowers of a couple weeks back having mostly cleared but the humid air remaining. But today there’s a lovely breeze, and it’s late enough in the afternoon that the sunshine is warm. Not at all stifling.

She finally gets to her car and puts her purse down heavily on the trunk to search her oversized bag for the keys she dropped in only minutes earlier. As usual at this point in the day, she thinks to herself that her next purse should really have more pockets so she can shave off some of the time she spends searching the jumble of free-falling chaos. And of course she can’t find her keys. So she starts pulling out random items, handfuls at a time. Tries to cut down on the clutter she has to comb through, clawing her way through her purse.

“What in the world,” she says to herself, pulling out a few pieces of wrapped candy with one hand. Because they're the kind of Mexican lollipops she used to buy in bodegas, back in LA. The little mango ones dusted with chile powder and wrapped in bright yellow plastic. She hasn’t ever seen them anywhere in DC. In fact the last time she saw one was in Ed’s office, after his wife came back from Houston, and she’d asked where he…

“Sneaky,” she shakes her head with a soft smile. Turns one of the little yellow wrappers over in her hand and wonders idly when Ed had time to slip them into her purse without her noticing.

She finally finds her keys. Unlocks her car, drops her purse on the floor and tucks one of the suckers into the cupholder nearest the wheel.  Slides into the driver’s seat and plugs her phone into it’s charger. Has already pulled out when she sees the text from Charlie.

She’s driving now so she doesn’t read it. Just dials Charlie with her little Bluetooth thingy turned on, her car now filled with the echoing sound of her phone ringing Charlie’s cell.

“Hey, Aunt Brenda,” Charlie answers, after the call almost rings out. “Did you see my text?”

“I’m was already drivin’ when I saw it,” Brenda tells her. “We still meetin’ in Adams Morgan?”

“I really can’t,” Charlie apologizes. “My methodologies paper is due tomorrow and I still feel like it’s a steaming pile of crap.”

“Are you sure aren’t obsessin' over it?” Brenda ask her, and pulls a face immediately. Knows exactly what her niece’s reply is going to be that particular question.

“Don’t you think that’s funny, coming from you?” Charlie asks dryly. Sounds exhausted and wound with stress.

“I’m not goin' to dignify that,” Brenda states primly, and leans onto her steering wheel as she glares at the long line of cars already backed up down Connecticut Avenue.

“I’m sorry to bail on you,” Charlie says, now sounding genuinely guilty. And disappointed as Brenda is, she doesn’t want Charlie to have to worry about that.

“It’s okay,” Brenda reassures. “We’ll get together soon. When everything settles down.”

Brenda had been so excited when Charlie applied to the University of Maryland’s clinical psychology program. Ecstatic when Charlie decided to go there, choosing it over the other graduate programs she’d gotten into around the country. But the reality is that Charlie has been in the area for more than nine months and Brenda has gotten to see her less than couple dozen times. Because Charlie is an adult now with an internship to manage and a demanding grad program and, when she has time, a dating life. There’s only so much time Charlie has left over after all of that, and Brenda does her best not to push her. Tries not to guilt her niece for just trying to make a way for herself in the world.

“I’m really sorry,” Charlie says again. “It’s just that it’s a forty-minute drive from College Park to the city with all the traffic.”

The metro would be a lot faster, but Brenda doesn’t point this out. Just takes a deep breath and taps her fingers impatiently on the wheel, the blue sedan in front of her failing to make its turn despite that it has the right of way.

“It’s okay,” Brenda repeats, if decidedly less convincing this time.  “You focus on your studies and don’t worry about dinner, okay?”

“Okay,” Charlie tells her. “I love you.”

“Love you too, honey. Call me if you need anything.”

“Okay. Bye, Aunt Brenda.”

“Bye-bye, sweetie.”

The call ends, Brenda’s car falling silent again, and she looks over at her cupholder. Snatches the sucker up and unwraps it while traffic’s at a momentary standstill. Pops it into her mouth, her eyes watering a little from the sudden rush of sweet and spice, and then lets her thoughts finally settle on that conversation she had with Ed.

“Sharon Raydor.”  

She says the name out loud to no one as she heads down Rockcreek Parkway, traffic slowing down again once she gets close to the turn off for Memorial Bridge. Tries to puzzle out the tide of panic she feels, just saying the name aloud in her empty, moving car.

“Sharon Raydor,” she says again, slower and louder this time. Traffic now flowing steadily down the George Washington Parkway, the Potomac still visible as she crosses over, into Virginia.

By the time Arlington turns into Alexandria, she decides that maybe she’s crazy.

. . .

Brenda isn’t sure what she’s waiting for, exactly. Isn’t sure if she expects Sharon to email her or call her or write her or what, but she starts waking up long before her alarm. Rolls over and checks her phone, scanning her inbox feverishly, before she does anything else.

She must seem off, because Charlie calls her five days after their cancelled dinner and then shows up unannounced at Brenda’s condo, two hours after they hang up.

“Everything okay?” Brenda asks her, Charlie standing in her living room with a worried expression on her face.

“I was going to ask _you_ that,” Charlie tells her. Slips her messenger bag off her shoulder and onto Brenda’s couch.

“Me?” Brenda asks, surprised. “I’m fine. Why?”

“You just sounded. . .” Charlie trails off. But Brenda can finish the thought for her, realizing now that whatever she’s feeling must have leaked out over the phone.

Out of sorts. Frazzled. Excited. Apprehensive.  All of them are true in some distorted way, but Brenda doesn’t want to admit to any of it.  

“Work’s been on the hectic side,” she lies instead. “I guess maybe I’ve been bringin’ it home with me.”  And even as she says it, she doesn’t know what’s gotten into her. Because she doesn’t make a habit of lying to Charlie about anything, and her lies to other people, like her daddy, are now almost exclusively ones of omission.

It’s taken her more than fifty years, but Brenda’s finally learned how to lie like a proper, responsible adult: facts provided accurately if with just a smidge shaved off the top.

“Oh,” Charlie says, hands on her hips. Sounds relieved even as Brenda turns to open the fridge. Hides her guilt and avoids looking into her niece’s face. “Since I’m here do you want to go to dinner?”

“Why yes I do,” Brenda smiles, closing the fridge. “Since I have nothin' in here but yogurt and week-old curry.”

“You’re hopeless,” Charlie shakes her head, and Brenda nods.

“Sometimes it certainly feels that way,” she nods in reply.

One of the many nice things about Brenda’s neighborhood is that she can slip her shoes on and stroll over to about a dozen decent restaurants. Tonight she takes Charlie to the big seafood place right on the river because they both like sitting outside on clear, warm evenings like this.

Brenda asks her a few questions about her end of term papers, knowing that Charlie’s responses will be long and fraught. And lord help her,  Brenda doesn’t listen to half of it. Just sits there picking at her dinner in a daze, remembering the way Charlie once tapped her finger against Sharon Raydor’s picture, declaring Sharon pretty.

“Aunt Brenda?” Charlie says, and Brenda fills with guilt anew when she realizes that Charlie’s been asking her something and she hasn’t even listened. “Are you sure okay?” Charlie asks her again, her brown eyes big and obviously concerned.

“A little tired,” Brenda smiles apologetically. Puts her hand on top of Charlie’s and pats it twice. “I haven’t been sleepin’ well.” At least that part is true.

“Do you want me to stay over?” Charlie asks her, once they’re back at Brenda’s condo.

“Oh, Charlie, I know you have work to do. And I’m fine. Honest.”

“I could use a night off anyway,” Charlie shrugs. “If you’re up to vegging out on the couch”

“Veggin’ out is my speciality” Brenda tells her. “Netflix or Blu Ray?”

Charlie passes out right in Brenda’s bed that night, her head firmly on her own pillow but her body curled over, onto her aunt’s side of the expensive pillowtop mattress.

Brenda doesn’t mind the encroachment. Falls asleep with with her fingers threaded through Charlie’s hair and sleeps so hard she doesn’t remember what she dreams.

. . .

Two weeks after Ed first brings up Sharon, Brenda’s in a meeting with him and six members of their division, going over some of reorganization that’s going to happen with the latest changes to their budget. The meeting ends, most everyone filing out of the small conference room, and Brenda stands, gathering up her documents.

“I’ll email you the changes,” she says to Ed, and he gives her a swift nod of approval. Stands to go himself and then turns back to her, coffee mug still cradled in his hands.

“Oh yeah,” he says, sipping his coffee casually. “I meant to tell you this morning. We’re officially trying to poach Sharon Raydor from the LAPD. So I’m going to need your help soon, I think.”

“My help?” Brenda asks carefully. Organizes and reorganizes the same stack of papers that were already just the way she needed them.

“She finished the first part of the application process but I imagine she might be reluctant,” Ed shrugs. “Being that she’s been in LA for so long. So, you know. We’re going to have to court her.”

“Court her,” Brenda repeats.

“Court her,” Ed nods solemnly. “I know you have it in you to be charming, Assistant Director Johnson.” And then he leaves.

Brenda’s pretty sure she makes it to all of her meetings and returns all of her important messages and doesn’t run any red lights on the way home, but standing in the parking lot of her little brick complex, she looks down at the keys in her hand and can’t entirely be sure. She’s spent the whole day rushing to get through with work and then rushing to get home, and now that she finally is, she realizes that was stupid because she has almost three hours to kill before the work day ends in LA and she can make the phone call she’s been plotting all day.

She calls David Gabriel at exactly 5:20pm his time. Not long after his work day for him to be in car yet, but long enough after business hours that he’ll be able to answer his cell even if he’s still in his office.

“Chief?” he answers, sounding surprised and pleased.

“David,” she greets. Makes herself sound real cheerful. “Is this a bad time?”

“Just doing paperwork,” he groans, and she can tell by the way he says it that he’s still in the office and probably has a lot left to do. “I’m glad you called because I was starting to go nuts.”

“Well I just missed your voice,” Brenda tells him. And she does miss talking with David, because even though they’re still good friends, David’s been dating someone for a while and now he and Brenda mostly text. A few calls on the weekends, here and there, but not so often anymore.

But catching up with David is really not what she’s after, even if she isn’t prepared to tell him that. So they chat for a full half an hour first, Brenda not trying to sound impatient as she waits for an opening to pump him for information. Waits and waits while David tells her about how he’s thinking about moving in with his girlfriend. How he’s torn as to whether she should move into his place, or else the two of them sign a ease on a new place entirely, so neither of them have more emotional claim on it than the other.

“Uh huh,” Brenda says, standing in her kitchen with her forehead pressed against the cool steel of the fridge. Because she loves David, she does, but he could worry anything to death if given the chance. And at the moment Brenda isn’t particularly invested in that state of David’s living situation.  

“Hey, I saw Julio yesterday,” David tells her, and Brenda’s so glad for the change in topic she could almost cry. “He asked about you.”

“He still likin’ his new job?” Brenda asks, knowing she has to slow play this. Figures asking about Sanchez’s transfer to LAPD’s Juvenile Division is as good a place as any to start.

“I think so. We just grabbed a quick lunch. But it sounds like he’s  happy with the work he’s getting to do down there.”

“Good,” Brenda says. Runs her finger along a sticky spot she’s discovered on her counter. “And how’s Mike Tao?”

“Same as always,” David tells her. “I think he and his wife are planning another trip back to your neck of the woods, so you may see them again soon.”

“Well that would be lovely,” Brenda feigns. Scratches her nail into the mystery substance on her counter, wondering what on earth it could be. “And everyone else?”

“Everyone else?” she hears him puzzle, and understandably so. Because of all the things they talk about, a roundup of the ghosts from jobs past isn’t typically something they do.

“Oh, you know,” Brenda says. “Provenza. Flynn. . . Cap'n Raydor.”

“Word on the street is that Provenza is finally going to retire this year.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Brenda chuckles. “He must be pullin’ a joke on everyone.”

“I don’t think so,” David says, a little more thoughtfully now. “They caught. . . I heard they, uh, caught a bunch of really rough cases right in a row.”

“Kids?” Brenda guesses. Shuts her eyes. Because that’s one thing about that job that she’s never going to miss.

“A few,” David confirms. “A couple that were whole families.”

“Not somethin' you get over,” Brenda eventually murmurs. Nothing else helpful to really say here. “Is Flynn holdin’ up okay?”

“I don’t know,” David sighs. Can hear the rustle of papers, like David’s shuffling something.  “Maybe not? Julio said Andy might be transferring out of Major Crimes.”

“Andy, too?” Brenda questions. Because she understands about Julio. Knows that it was his decision and his new job might be a better match for where he’s at in his life. But Flynn? That doesn’t make any sense.

“Well, for a couple years he and Captain Raydor were, uh. . .”

“Yeah,” Brenda says. Because she could have guessed how that sentence would end, even before she left LA.

“And now they’re not anymore,” David tells her, and Brenda leans heavily against the counter. Begins to feel like a jerk for nosing around like this.

“And Sharon?” Brenda asks, her voice small even to her own ears. “She doin’ alright, considerin'?”

“She seems tired,” David says. And though he never quite warmed to the woman, he sounds genuinely sympathetic now. “I run into her sometimes, down at the courthouse. And the last few months. . . She just seems tired, Chief.”

“It’s a real exhaustin’ job,” Brenda says softly. But her mind stays hovering, back in that long pause that David just took.  

What was he going to say before he changed his mind and repeated himself instead?

“Oh, yeah,” David says. “She asked about your address in Alexandria. Whether it had changed again.”

“Oh?” Brenda manages, and feels even more guilty. Because she can guess why Sharon asked that.

“It was a while ago though. Sounded like maybe she wasn’t sure you’d gotten something that she’d sent out there?” And even over the phone, Brenda can see the gears grinding away inside his head. “Do you guys keep in touch or something?”

“A little,” Brenda tells him. “Christmas cards mostly.”

“Huh,” David says. Probably waiting for her to say something else on the subject, but Brenda won’t admit to more than that. Won’t tell him that Sharon’s holiday cards kept coming while Brenda’s just stopped entirely.

“So what part of town are you thinkin’ about movin’ to?” Brenda asks him.

And maybe David is just so gullible as to miss the deflection despite how long he’s known her, or else he realizes there’s no sense in fighting her for information, but regardless the conversation goes back to their very first subject. David hemming and hawing for another twenty minutes and Brenda dutifully listening to it, if only because David is such a loyal, dear friend to her and Brenda doesn’t get many chances to pay him back for that.

When they finally hang up, Brenda feels hungry. Opens her fridge to find leftover vegetable korma and pulls it out, grabbing a clean fork. She gets a few bites in before she realizes it tastes a bit off. Not the kind off that would give her food poisoning but more like the container wasn’t closed all the way while it sat in the fridge. So she tosses it out and leaves the kitchen, not particularly hungry anymore.

She goes into her bedroom because she thinks maybe she’ll just watch a movie, something on her laptop until it’s time to go to sleep. But instead she finds herself in her walk-in closet, standing on a chair she had to drag in there, just so she can reach the box she’s pushed all the way back, on the very top shelf. Gets down after almost falling, and then sits right in the chair. The sleeves of blazers and various jackets dangling next to her legs as she sits still for a moment, her memory box in her lap.

She hasn’t let herself open it in a while. She’s always liked to sit and reread the things she’s held onto and remembers her mama doing the same thing. But then Brenda stopped. Started to worry that maybe,maybe she’s just spent her life holding on to all the wrong things?

She takes a deep breath now and pushes the cardboard lid open, a couple cards spilling out onto her lap. And it isn’t hard to find the ones from Sharon because Brenda spent so much time staring at them. Even the ones she didn’t respond to she still treated with great care. Lectured herself for doing so, maybe, but treated them gingerly nonetheless. And she makes herself read them now. Reread the words written to her by such a painfully guarded woman but who never failed to send Brenda a Christmas card, always writing a long enough note inside to make it clear the gesture wasn’t perfunctory.

It’s tempting to put everything inside the box and close the lid now, because Brenda feels real wretched. Sees plain as day now that this was Sharon’s way of trying and she just didn’t realize it. Didn’t ever pick up the phone to call Sharon because she was too busy waiting for Sharon to call her first.

“Well then,” Brenda says to herself. Looks down at the box and stares at the little yellow bag of stuff she never goes into, no matter what. Because that’s the stuff from the funeral. From Fritz dying. And Charlie and Jimmy were kind enough to save it all for her, but they were also smart enough to seal off from the rest of her memory box; sealed it all in a small plastic bag that’s fittingly the same color as the barricade tape Brenda spent so much of her life stepping right over.

Brenda remembers, keenly, Jimmy once telling her that Sharon sent her a card to the house along with some flowers. And though Brenda feels strangely compelled to read that card now, she also feels torn. Stares at the yellow plastic bag and asks herself whether it’s really worth digging through that big stack of needles just to find the lone, soft piece of hay floating in their midst.

She does it quickly, like ripping off a bandaid. And isn’t as bad as she thinks. Painful, sure, but most of the condolence cards are so generic that she doesn’t cry like she feared she would. Plus it isn’t hard to find Sharon’s card because she recognizes the handwriting. Spots the exaggerated cursive ‘B’ and the elegant penmanship and knows immediately that the bright pink envelope is the one from Sharon. Opens it up carefully, trying not to tear at anything, and then slides the card right out.

She expects it to be vaguely religious because she knows that Sharon’s a practicing Catholic. She’s surprised when the cover the card is just a black and white sketch of a landscape and the inside blank, save Sharon’s own writing. It’s just a couple sentences, simple words maybe, but there’s a little scrap of paper folded inside the card, too. And Brenda picks it up, dropping the card in her lap. Frowns at the piece of paper hard before she pulls it open and reads it.

It’s a poem. A famous one that Brenda vaguely remembers studying, back in school. And though the words are lovely and the sentiment is strangely appropriate, what makes Brenda tear up is that the scrap of paper is battered and slightly yellowed, a crease mark down the center that doesn’t match the way it was folded into Brenda’s card. Like it’s something that Sharon had probably held onto for years and considered of some importance, like the the kinds of things Brenda keeps safely tucked away in her memory box. A thing Sharon must have cared about a lot but decided to give to Brenda anyway, when Brenda’s best friend in the world went and died on her.

And maybe Brenda’s been out of sorts all month and she’s long overdue for a cry, but it still scares her, how hard she sobs as she sits alone with her entire life in a box on her lap. Cries so hard that her sides hurt and her throat burns. Cries long after her eyes are out of tears and it’s just that kind of awful dry shuddering she used to see victims’ loved ones do, even the ones that turned out to be murderers.

She goes to bed, eventually. Dreams of people chasing her. Dreams of Phillip Stroh. Wakes up the next day, bleary eyed, and gets halfway dressed for work before she realizes it’s a Saturday.

“You sick?” Jimmy asks her over FaceTime later that day.

“Huh?” she says.

“You look like shit, Bren,” he tells her. But he doesn’t mean it in a mean way and Brenda can see clearly that she does look downright awful. “You catching the flu or something?”

“I haven’t been sleepin’ well,” she admits. “You could have told me that once I hit the backside of fifty I’d start lookin’ like crud when I get less than six hours of sleep.”

“That discovery is better made first-hand, I think,” Jimmy smirks. “Plus I think took after Mama in effortless appearance, even under strain. . .  Too bad you took after Daddy.”

“You are my least favorite brother,” Brenda lies. “If I die before you, you’re inheritin' nothing.” But she can’t hold her consternation over FaceTime because Jimmy just gives her that wide-eyed smile of his and she just shakes her head.

They chat for about thirty minutes. Jimmy and Frank are coming down in a week and a half, so there are a few plans to make. But  right as Brenda’s saying goodbye, Jimmy stops her. Asks her again if she’s okay.

“Do you remember Sharon Raydor, the woman from the LAPD who sent me those nice flowers when Fritz died?” Brenda asks him.

“Sure,” Jimmy says, clearly thrown by the shift in topic. “I remember your friend Sharon.”

Brenda squirms here, sees her discomfort reflected back in the small image of herself as she says, “she’s applyin' for a job out here.”

“Well isn’t that a good thing?” Jimmy puzzles. “You having another friend in town?”

“Yeah,” Brenda shifts. “The thing is. . . I think I’ve been a real bad friend to her. I think - well, she’s been havin’ a rough year and I just didn’t. . .”  But she doesn’t what else to say. Shakes her head, looks away.

“Alright,” Jimmy says . Sounds firm now. “So you were a crappy friend.”

“I was,” Brenda nods. Looks back at Jimmy even though she really doesn’t want to.

“So do better from now on."

“It’s not that easy,” she says eventually.

“No,” Jimmy allows. “But it’s also not that hard.”

“No?” Brenda murmurs, biting her thumbnail.

“Nope,” Jimmy says, less sternly now. “Just try to suck a teeny, tiny bit less, Brenda Leigh.”

“ _Least favorite brother_ ,” Brenda tells him again, though she’s smiling a little when she says it. “I love you and bye-bye.”

“Bye-bye now,” he says as she clicks the conversation off.

She drags herself into the bathroom after that,  since it’s mid-day now and she’s yet to shower. Turns on the water and let’s it run for a minute because her water heater is on the temperamental side and could stand to be replaced. Goes and grabs some clothes from her dresser and comes back in to find the bathroom already filling with steam. Puts her clothes down on the counter and strips off her pajamas, thinking about what Jimmy said.

She glances in the mirror and sees the naked woman staring tiredly back at her. Puts her hands on her hips and gives herself a stern look.

“Do better,” she orders herself, before the mirror completely fogs up.

Climbs in the shower and, oddly enough, feels decidedly less out of sorts.

. . .

Monday morning Brenda goes into work and it’s like whatever silently clicked out of place inside of her has somehow righted itself. She hasn’t exactly been unproductive - work’s just something she never really fails at - but she walks in that morning and barrels through a day’s worth of tasks in well under three hours. Sticks her head out of her office and politely asks the administrative assistant she shares with Ed to send her the minutes of several division meetings, because next week they have an inter-divison meeting headed by one of the Under Secretaries of Homeland Security, and those things are always political shit shows. So she wants to prepared. Wants to figure out, way ahead of time, where the knives are and who’s holding them and what petty, tiny thing they’ll think they have to gain from stabbing her and Ed in the back.

“I heard the Dragon Lady came in today,” Ed says to her, stopping by at lunch time. “So I decided to come by and pay my respects.”

It’s a nickname Brenda earned from a rather lazy underling of whom she gave an unsatisfactory review, her first year as Assistant Director. And she told herself that it was silly to  let it  sting, the idea of some person she didn't even respect not liking her, because Brenda’s had a long, full career - chalked to the brim with people who’ve hated her. But of course she’s only human and it still hurt, the idea of someone giving her an unflattering nickname. And she’d confessed it to Charlie one night over drinks in Georgetown, when Charlie had come out to scout grad schools.

“That’s awesome,” Charlie had said. “The Dragon Lady? That’s _fucking epic_.”

“It’s childish and kinda hurtful,” Brenda had tsked, winced at Charlie’s language. But her niece had simply shrugged.

“If I learned anything from you, Aunt Brenda, it’s that being a good, strong person and being liked by everyone are no where near the same thing.” And Brenda hadn’t said anything back, because Charlie had a point.

“The Dragon Lady is indeed here,” Brenda smiles smugly at Ed now. “And she hasn’t set any peasants ablaze yet. But, ya know, it’s still real early in the day.”

“Prep for next Monday?” Ed asks her, after he barks out laughter

“Yeah,” she says. Frowns down her glasses. “I want to be armed to the teeth.”

“As your direct boss I should tell you that we’re all on the same side here,” Ed crosses his arms. “And we should enter this meetings with open minds, our hearts filled with the spirit of cooperation.”

“That so?” Brenda asks him.

“Hell no,” Ed says. “And come Monday morning I’ll be wearing my old Kevlar.”  

“Not a bad idea,” Brenda agrees. “Anyway, did you need something, Director?”

“Just to tell you that I’m probably going to have pull you in for a few  working lunches next week, so don’t schedule yourself too tightly.”

“Will do,” Brenda says, already thinking about the notes she has in front of her so she doesn’t ask why Ed needs her. “Thanks for the warnin'.”

Another three days goes by before Brenda makes herself do everything responsible under the sun besides calling Sharon.  Spends two hours of an evening cleaning the grout in her master bath before she realizes that stalling with endless productivity and projects isn’t really helping the problem at hand.

It isn’t difficult to get Sharon’s home number because of who Brenda is and who she used to be; feels strangely unwilling to call Sharon’s cell though that will most certainly be a much faster way of reaching her. And of course she gets Sharon’s voicemail (maybe that was the whole point?), but she hears the generic message with an automated voice and then there’s this long, awkward pause after the beep. Because Brenda didn’t think to plan out what she was going to say.

“Hi. Hi, Sharon, this is Brenda. . . Johnson.  Call me back when you have a chance.” She leaves her cell number although it’s still the same one she’s had since LA, and thinks to add, “It’s, uh, not related to your application.” And then she just hangs up as fast as she can.

And the next few days are hell because every time her phone buzzes, rings or chirps, Brenda jumps to look at it. But it’s never Sharon. And eventually Brenda starts to feel like an idiot for thinking it would be. For thinking that Sharon would want to talk to her, too.

The inter-division meeting Brenda’s been prepping for gets moved from Monday to Wednesday because of a change in the Under Secretary's schedule, and Wednesday morning Brenda comes in early and looks over her notes until Ed swings by to grab her.

“Time to roll out,” Ed tells her, his tone clipped. And though Brenda’s always been better at giving orders than following them, she steps right in line. Follows Ed’s lead in the meeting, her meticulous notes laid out in front of her. Uses words like ‘unfortunate’ and ‘regrettable’ instead of phrases like  ‘moronic’ and ‘pigheaded crap.’  Decimates a couple of self-serving, incompetent jackasses while Ed sits besides her, quietly sipping his water and trying not to look pleased.

“Please don’t ever retire,” Brenda tells him, when the meeting is mercifully finished and they’re alone, standing in an elevator.

“You don’t want my job?” Ed asks. Makes it sound like a joke but Brenda knows it's a real question. Understands that Ed is grooming her and has been grooming her for quite a while.

“Not really,” Brenda says. Hopes she’s not disappointing him too much.

The elevator doors open and Brenda starts to turn left, heading to her office, when Ed stops her.

“We have to be at a lunch meet and greet on the other campus in forty-five minutes,” Ed tells her. “Sorry I forgot to tell you earlier.”

Brenda frowns down at her watch because she has a few things to get done that are kind of pressing, but it’s not like Ed is making this a request.

“Alright,” she says. That gives her about twenty minutes to do some work before she they have to catch the shuttle to the other Homeland Security complex in the southeast part of the city. “Who’s the meet and greet for, anyway?”

“Sharon Raydor.”

“What?” Brenda gapes.

“We flew her in for a few days,” Ed says. “You didn’t know?”

“No,” Brenda replies. Manages not to spit the word at him. “When did she get in?”

“Last night I think,” Ed says. And then asks, clearly puzzled, “she didn’t tell you?”

“ _No_ ,” Brenda says again. “No one did.”

And isn’t surprising that Brenda doesn’t know this, because she’s not an integral part of the hiring process, communication within Homeland Security is horrible, and Ed is downright awful at remembering things sometimes. But still.

_But still._

Brenda doesn’t go to her office. Just goes straight to the women’s room to give herself a once over, because this is not an outfit she wore with the intention of seeing Sharon Raydor today. She’s wearing a smart black and white colorblock dress that was expensive on its own, even before it cost her dearly to have it tailored. But she stares at herself for a minute in the unflattering white light of the restroom  and can’t decide whether she should lose the blazer she’s wearing over it. She doesn’t, even though it’s going to be miserably warm, wearing it outside. Fumbles through her bag for her makeup, figuring out pretty quickly that she must have left the lipstick she’s presently wearing back in her car. Clicks her heel angrily against the tile floor when she realizes her only options are to leave her lipstick alone, even though it’s faded from hours of wear and three different cups of coffee, or else put on the red matte she has in her bag.

She charges out of the bathroom a few minutes later, lips stained red and her tight bun repinned at a slightly different angle. Goes down to meet Ed at the shuttle stop, standing with her bag draped over her shoulder, arms crossed over chest, insides rapidly looping themselves into tighter and tighter knots.

“Ready?” Ed says, appearing beside her. But it’s not really a question, and they both climb onto the empty shuttle, the driver waiting for a only a few minutes before he begins to pull out.

Brenda doesn’t make conversation the way they normally do because she doesn’t think she’s capable. Notices, at one point in the drive, Ed looking over at her like he’s realized she’s changed her makeup and is thinking about complimenting her.

He doesn’t, and Brenda is grateful for the silence. Spends the rest of the ride with her eyes trained on the road in front of them and then on the Potomac, gray-blue water stretching out wide beside the shuttle. Thinks and thinks about the first time she met Sharon, in that hospital back in LA. Thinks about double doors and the sounds of heels clicking against linoleum until the shuttle stops, Ed standing up and reaching to hand Brenda her bag.

The  Department of Homeland Security’s St. Elizabeth’s Campus is new and beautiful and everything that the Nebraska Avenue Complex isn’t. And though it was built with the intention of consolidating the diaspora of DHS offices into a solitary, updated location, it will still be years before this will be anything close to the reality. It’s a bait and switch, bringing job candidates here, because DHS _always_ hold events with applicants on the newer, shiny campus - even when so many of the divisions these people will be working in are housed back on the crumbling buildings of Nebraska Avenue. They’d done it with Brenda, too. And maybe it’s something she would have resented more, if she hadn’t already been stumbling rather blindly, just trying to find her balance again.

Sharon isn’t hard to spot, even though she’s standing in a group of about a dozen people, her back to the doors through which Brenda is entering. Sharon’s hair is just so singularly recognizable, and her posture always so perfect, Brenda zooms in on her immediately. Quickens her stride to beat Ed’s longer legs to the spot where Sharon’s standing in her purple silk blouse and black pencil skirt.

“Here they are,” someone in the group says, and Brenda's breath catches when Sharon spins around, smiles at Brenda in a kind of polite, reserved way.

Brenda puts her hand out, smiling warmly and about to say, 'so nice to see you again, Sharon.' But Sharon beats her to the punch. Nods courteously at Brenda, the way Brenda nods to all of Ed’s bosses and Ed's bosses' bosses. Says to Brenda, “it's a pleasure to see you again, Assistant Director Johnson.”

And Brenda clamps down on the freezing hot pain she feels bloom just under her breastbone. Shakes Sharon’s hand firmly and replies just as politely, “the pleasure is all mine, Captain Raydor.”

. . .

* * *

 

And in case you care, my headcanon for Ed Castillio is _very specific_. And in my screwed up little universe, Ed is played by:


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

_I am the same, I’m the same_   
_I’m trying to change._   
_I am the same, I’m the same._   
_I’m trying to change._

-Florence + The Machine, “Third Eye”

* * *

 

The official events of the meet and greet for Sharon don’t last very long after Brenda and Ed arrive. There are a few other people DHS has flown out, candidates for other jobs in other divisions, and the spiel they're doing for all of them is generalized. Most of it already transpired while Ed and Brenda were stuck in that hellish meeting back on Nebraska Avenue, so all that's left is a tour of the new campus. And most likely Sharon’s itinerary was planned before that meeting was switched from Monday to today, but from the outside their late arrival just looks like bad planning on the part of whoever put this together.

“How long until this facility is completed?” Sharon asks, when the tour's almost finished. And when the woman from HR gives the answer of eight years with most offices being migrated before then, Brenda must pull a pretty obvious face because Ed elbows her side.

The HR woman isn’t _exactly_ lying in the sense that eight years _is_ the stated completion deadline. But everyone in DHS has accepted for years that the new campus will never be finished by then because there isn’t enough money to constantly, consistently dump on such a big project. Not even official decisions assume the completion deadline of eight years anymore. Answering Sharon’s question this way is _stupidly shortsighted_ because it’s the kind of deception that’s easily discovered, leaving behind a seed of distrust in previously pristine soil.

“Careful,” Ed whispers. Which means Brenda must still be looking cross and disapproving. But she can’t help it. Some of the stuff they’re saying to Sharon is idiotic. And Brenda hasn’t had anything to eat since well before that long meeting. And, _well._ Maybe Brenda’s resting expression is just kind of cross to begin with?

The tour ends back in a lobby, a table of refreshments having been set up. But it’s more snacks rather than a proper lunch - no sandwiches even - and Brenda sees Sharon’s face fall just a little. And Brenda is absolutely starving now, but instead of going and shoving her face full of cookies she maneuvers herself over to where Sharon’s now standing alone, everyone else milling about the food.

“Did they at least give you a light itinerary this morning?” Brenda asks her. “Since you just got in last night?” She stands beside Sharon casually, like it isn’t the first time they’ve seen each other in four years. The first time they’ve stood shoulder to shoulder in more years than that.

“Oh,” Sharon says, sounding surprised. “No, actually. The day’s been . . . rather full.”

“Do you have a break after this?” Her on concern probably misplaced given that Sharon’s present job sometimes requires her to be up for days at a time, go without eating because she doesn’t have the time for meals or else plain can’t stomach food after the pictures she’s spent hours examining.

“If so I’m not aware of it,” Sharon replies. Sounds drained.

After that they’re alone anymore because Ed saddles up next to them. Hands Brenda a massive chocolate chip cookie and offers Sharon a bottle of sparking water.

“Thank you,” Sharon says to Ed, Brenda already tearing into her cookie. Pops a piece into her mouth as Ed winks at her.

“Better?” Ed teases Brenda, and she just gives him a look of muted annoyance. “Captain Raydor, I’ve just been iinformed that you’re with Brenda and I for the rest of the day. So I would humbly suggest that the first order of business be to politely say our goodbyes and then go get some real lunch. Would you be amenable to that?”

“ _Please_ ,” Sharon says, sounding relieved. Seems to realize how that sounded and opens her mouth to say something else.

“It’s okay,” Brenda tells her. Touches her hand to Sharon’s arm before she realizes what she’s doing and pulls it back. “We know how unenlightenin' these things can be. We’ll just. . . make a little exit is all.”

The three of them shake a few hands and almost make it out the door when someone from another division, a crass man Brenda rather loathes, plants himself in front of her and gives her a toothy, insincere smile.

“Assistant Director Johnson,” he greets. “I heard you made quite the stand today, back on campus.”

“I’m not sure exactly what you mean by that,” Brenda gives him a bland look. “Bein’ that I was seated for the entire duration of the meeting.”

It’s a diplomatic dodge of the kind she’s only recently become capable of reliably producing. But it doesn’t work on her current interlocutor because he’s one of those people in DHS with a lot of ambition but not enough intellect to power it.

“I heard you left bodies on the floor,” the guy smirks, leaning a little farther into Brenda’s space. “I heard you didn’t take any hostages.”

“I wouldn’t characterize it that way,” Ed chimes in beside Brenda, his voice a low rumble. A matching expression that would make someone with more sense and less bravado promptly shut their mouths.

“Well, _I_ would,” Brenda says. Stares hard into the guy’s unblinking eyes, ignores Ed's protest. “Given that hostage situations were more my late husband’s specialty. And between him bein' dead and my long career in law enforcement, my only expertise is dealin’ with bodies once they're good and cold.” Offers him a mean smile of her own and says, “I’ll be happy to demonstrate that particular skill set for you, if you'd like.”

And when the guy’s face goes slack, she steps right by him. Takes a dark satisfaction in the fact that while people - men especially - are so often uncomfortable with the mere idea of widows, that discomfort can rather neatly be used against them, when it's convenient.

It isn’t until she gets outside that she thinks that maybe that was out of line. Scratches her eyebrow as she waits for Ed and Sharon to catch up.

Yeah, that was definitely out of line.

Ed’s already cracked a smile by the time he reaches her, but he isn't the one she's suspects she's just embarrassed herself in front of. And Brenda can’t make herself look at Sharon yet, is just too annoyed with her own smart mouth to hazard a look back in that direction as Sharon's heels click against the sidewalk . So Brenda just stands there, staring at Ed’s amused face.

“Well. . . “ he says, but doesn’t say anything else. Just chuckles.

“Well,” Brenda repeats, hands on her hips. Shakes her head, chagrined.

“So what are we having for lunch?” Sharon finally asks, standing beside Ed. A polite sidestep of Brenda’s little outburst, maybe. But Brenda when finally looks into Sharon’s face she sees Sharon smiling in that way of hers that’s pleased rather than belittling. Like the day Brenda put on that red dress for her meeting with mayor and Sharon stood there in her office, shaking Brenda’s hand.

"I was thinking we take a cab to downtown." Ed says. "Grab some food at one of the delis before we head back."

"That okay with you, Sharon?" Brenda asks.

Sharon nods back. "Yes. . . Yes, that would be fine, Brenda."

When they grab a taxi, Ed hops in the front seat next to the driver so they can both sit in back. Brenda slides in first, scooting across the seat because there's traffic on one side of them. And there's a moment when she has to stop to navigate her butt around a seat buckle, but Sharon apparently doesn't see Brenda pause because she slides right into her, thighs bumping against thighs.

"Sorry," Sharon says immediately.

"No, I was in your way," Brenda tells her.

And then the cab pulls out and everything gets fairly quiet, only the sound of traffic and the cab driver's phone steadily beeping with texts. The metal on metal sound of Sharon's bracelets tinkling in a way that Brenda finds vaguely comforting, Sharon adjusting her wrist where it’s propped against the car door.

“Do you have any questions for us?” Ed asks Sharon, maybe when he can’t take the silence anymore. And though Ed is better with people than Brenda, he isn’t so good that this doesn’t come off as awkward.

“Well,” Sharon says. “When is that campus _really_ going to be ready?”

“Never,” Brenda shakes her head. Sees Ed take a deep breath.

“That bad?” Sharon asks, though it sounds like she’s not surprised.

“I suspect it will be finished sometime between when I retire and when I die, but I wouldn’t bet my pension on it,” Ed admits.

“Not so different from LA,” Brenda tells Sharon, trying to make it sound light. But Sharon considers her with a serious expression before tearing her eyes away, looking straight ahead.

“I’d say there are some noticeable differences,” Sharon murmurs. And Brenda has no idea how to take that.

They pull onto L Street and Ed’s phone buzzes several times in a row with texts and emails. Then begins to ring. By the time the cab slows down in front of a little sandwich place, Brenda can tell there’s an issue.

Ed hangs up the phone, clearly agitated, looks back at Brenda as she’s about to get out of the cab.

“I’ve gotta go back to back to campus,” he tells her.

“Was that-”

“Yeah,” he says. Tries to sound like he doesn’t want to throw his phone through the windshield because there’s someone else in the car who they’re trying to convince that this is a pleasant, fulfilling work environment. “You stay. Have lunch.”

“I’ll bring you something back,” Brenda tells him, now through the window of the cab. Sees Sharon shift uncomfortably, standing there next to her. “You want salami and cheese on rye?”

“Yes, please,” Ed replies, gives her a grateful look. Brenda pats the top of the cab and steps back, the blue vehicle sliding into traffic and then disappearing around the corner.

“Sorry about that,” Brenda says to Sharon. “We had kind of a difficult meetin’ today.”

“I never would have gleaned that,” Sharon says. “What with people accusing you of leaving bodies in your wake and me being so uninclined to string together facts.” And then apparently Sharon realizes exactly how bitchy that was, because her hand to flies up to her mouth and she looks back at Brenda apologetically. “I’m sorry,” she shakes her head. “That was. . .”

“Funny,” Brenda saves her. Grins as she opens the door to the sandwich shop and let’s Sharon walk in first. “That was funny, Sharon. And it’s okay. This isn’t anything official. This is just. . . lunch.”

“Thank you,” Sharon says, and it sounds like she really means it. Sounds like maybe Brenda actually did something right and this whole this isn’t going to be the worst kind of disaster.

They order their lunches and Ed’s sandwich to-go, and then sit the booth farthest from the door. Open their drinks and wait for their order to be brought over to them.

“Brenda,” Sharon says. Has both of her hands wrapped around her open water bottle but doesn’t move to drink it. “You look really good.”

“Yeah?” Brenda asks, because that’s not what she was expecting. Maybe wouldn’t ever expect Sharon Raydor to say that to her. And it means a great deal, apparently; seems to make something tight unwind in Brenda. Because she’s gained a little weight since she came to DC, worries more about the lines around her mouth that just get deeper and deeper.

“Yes,” Sharon says. “You look happy.”

“I’m not unhappy,” Brenda allows. Tilts her head to the side and rubs her arm.  “When I left Major Crimes and went to the DA’s office I missed being a cop every single day. Missed the pace. Missed the nature of the work. But now. . .” She takes in a deep breath, decides to be painfully honest because it’s only when she was brutally honest with Sharon that they ever got anywhere, back in LA. “Now I go to work and do things that sometimes affect a lot of people. Help an awful lot of law enforcement agencies. And sometimes I go to work and accomplish basically nothin’  because my hands are tied." She shrugs, "but either way I come home, I eat dinner, and I fall asleep knowin’ I won’t see dead children the next day.”

“Where do I sign up?” Sharon says after a long pause, her expression open. And Brenda can see that this must be what David meant when he said that Sharon seemed tired. The kind of mental exhaustion that sinks into someone’s bones and that happens to so many people on the force.

It's something Brenda suspects might not have ever happened to her, if things had been different. Because she was too obsessive and had way too slight a self-preservation instinct. She never would have hit a wall, gotten out, if her mama hadn’t died.

“Yeah?” Brenda asks again.

“I. . .” Sharon shakes her head. “I have to make a change. It’s time.”

“Okay,” Brenda says. Because she knows that feeling. Packed up her entire life in LA without any second thoughts. “Well, I play no official role in the hirin’ process. And I’m tellin’ you that so you believe me when I say that my loyalties are to you here and not DHS. So if there’s something you need from me. Information, whatever. You just ask.”

“Director Castillio,” Sharon says. And it sounds like a statement, but Brenda guesses that it’s actually a prompt.

“Best boss I’ve ever had,” Brenda replies. “And the Assistant Secretary in charge of The Office of State and Local Law Enforcement is the former-”

“Chief of San Francisco PD. Yes, I read that.”

“She’s been smart enough to gobble up a lot of good people from places with freezes like the one in LA. She’s good. Effective." Brenda shrugs, "above that you get into Under Secretaries and some fairly disgustin’ layers of politics, but I don’t often see that curtain pulled back, even as Assistant Director. I doubt you’d deal with it much at all as a specialist.”

Their food comes, a young man depositing a tray at their table, and then there’s a lull in the conversation while Sharon slowly picks at her Caesar salad and Brenda’s inhales her roast beef sandwich.

“You’d be my boss,” Sharon says after a couple minutes. “If I took this job.”

And Brenda treads lightly here, because this is tricky. This is delicate. This is the kind of thing she does so poorly with because she’s always smashed her way through everything, not realizing what she’d even shattered until long after the pieces hit the floor.

“For the most part we all get our marchin’ orders from Ed,” Brenda tells her. “It’s not often I would be givin’ you directives.”

“You don’t think I could take directives from you?” Sharon asks, a bit prickly. “You outranked me back in LA, too.”

“And that went so well for us,” Brenda snarks back.

“It didn’t go poorly. In the end.”

“It didn't,” Brenda allows. Realizes she’s getting defensive. Takes a bite of her lunch and then wipes her hands on her paper napkin. “But this is different.”

“How, exactly?”

“Well, because this time I was hopin’ we could be friends.”

Sharon takes a long time to chew the crouton she’s forked into her mouth, her eyes wide behind her glasses. Looks back down at her salad when she finally swallows and says, “me, too.”

Brenda twists open her soda bottle, takes a long drink to save herself from having to talk anymore. Watches as Sharon’s thin bracelets clink repeatedly against the table, Sharon’s wrist resting beside her salad.

And Brenda smiles, remembers now that that sound used to drive her nuts.

 

. . .

 

Brenda doesn’t remember that Jimmy and Frank are coming into town until the end of the day. She’s back at her office, Sharon off with Ed and some other people, when she looks down at her phone and sees two texts from Jimmy.

 _Almost at Union Station._ And then, apparently an hour later,   _OK if we cab straight to your place? I still have your key._

And then there’s a knock on the her office door and Sharon’s standing in the threshold.

“How’d it go?” Brenda asks her.

“Hard to tell,” Sharon says. “I think fine. But that was the end of my itinerary today, so. . .”

“What hotel do they have you in?” Brenda asks.

“A place near Georgetown,” Sharon replies. “The Monticello.”

“My brother’s in town,” Brenda blurts, and Sharon stands there, looking at her.

“How nice,” Sharon says. “Does he live nearby?”

“He and his partner live in New York.”

“Oh,” Sharon says. “Well. Have fun and I will see you tomorrow.”

And Brenda knows she should say something else, invite Sharon out to something. But Brenda doesn’t know how to  and now her brother is under foot. And maybe Sharon would just politely decline an invitation anyway?

“Look who’s on time,” Jimmy says, when Brenda comes through the door of her condo. The whole place already smells like food, Frank chopping something while Jimmy fusses over a pan. Looks like he’s adjusting the temperature of the burner underneath it.

“My friend Sharon’s in town,” Brenda says, before she’s even dropped her bag down. She’s had an entire drive to contemplate what she should have done about Sharon and now she’s out of sorts.

“You have friends?” Frank asks her, because he’s a snarky bastard. Which is to say that Charlie adores him and he and Brenda have gotten on well, after a bit of a bumpy start.

“You remember her,” Jimmy says to Frank. “We met her at the. .  .“

“Oh,” Frank says, obviously thinking. “Oh! The one with the glasses and that amazing hair.”  

“That’s her,” Brenda rolls her eyes. “Anyway, she’s in town.”

“Well that’s fun,” Jimmy says.

“I didn’t know she was comin’,” Brenda admits.

“Uh huh,” Jimmy eyes her. “Well, is she coming over?”

“No,” Brenda bites her lip.

“She already have plans?” Frank asks her. But Jimmy just stares hard at Brenda because he knows his sister, and Brenda knows he knows.

She gets defensive before Jimmy even starts to lecture her.

“ _Brenda Leigh_ ,” Jimmy scolds her.

“I know,” she huffs.

“Is this you sucking _less_?” he asks her pointedly. Which is just unfair.

“It is, actually,” Brenda snaps. “And I have to pee.” And then she stomps to her bedroom and into her bathroom. Uses the toilet and then lets the hot water run over her hands until the skin is red and tingling.

She comes back out, pulling her hair out of its bun. Is about to ask her whether it would be alright if Sharon met them for drinks and dessert after dinner when she sees her phone in Jimmy’s hand.

“What did you just do?” she demands when he sets her phone back on the counter gently.

“Invited her to come to dinner here.”

“ _What_?” Brenda screeches. “You pretended to be me?”

“No,” Jimmy says. “I told her that it was your brother texting, that I’ve heard so many lovely things about her,  and we would love to have her for dinner if she’s willing to put up with my thoughtless sister’s horrifyingly bad manners.”

Brenda’s eyes go wide. “Jimmy!”

“I was kidding about the bad manners part,” he glares at her. “But it was a close call.”

He keeps on stirring the sauce on the stove and the whole place smells like mint. She’s willing to bet that there’s lamb in the oven that the sauce will go on because this is Jimmy’s favorite recipe to make for people.

Brenda comes into the kitchen and starts poking her head into various Trader Joe's bags. Fingers a brown paper handle absently, the rustle of the bag muted by the steady thunk of Frank’s knife and the sizzle of Jimmy’s pan. She’d done a bit of shopping before the boys came into town, the two of them are always so horrified by how little she has in the fridge. But they obviously assumed the worst because they stopped at the store as soon as they made it in.

“What’d she say?” Brenda eventually asks Jimmy.

And then Brenda’s phone chirps and Jimmy motions to it. Says to her, “find out for yourself.”

Normally Brenda would stand there staring at the phone before she picks it up, but she doesn’t have that luxury. Not with Frank discreetly watching her and Jimmy openly staring at her, like he’s a teacher and this is recess and Brenda is some eight-year-old who refuses to come in off the swings.

So Brenda just grabs up the phone up.

_That would be fine. What’s the address?_

Brenda types out her address carefully. Tells her that a cab won’t be the fastest at this time of day. But if she takes the metro from Foggy Bottom to Alexandria, Brenda can fetch her from the metro station. And then she waits until her phone chirps again.

 _That sounds efficient._  

Brenda scowls at the reply at first, then cracks a reluctant smile.

“Is she coming?” Frank asks her.

“She is,” Brenda tells them, hands on her hips.

“We’re going to need more wine,” Jimmy points out.

“We are," Brenda agrees. Because she could use some Merlot. Would prefer a direct I.V. of it, now that she knows Sharon's on her way. "I'll just walk to that little store around the corner." Grabs her keys and her wallet.

"Remember some of us don't drink red," Frank calls to her as she pulls open the door.

"And I've always tried real hard not to hold that against you," Brenda drawls. Slams the door behind her.

She comes back with two bottles of wine. Shoves the white in the fridge and sets the red on the counter. She probably has about five minutes before she has to leave to pick up Sharon, so she wonders now if she should change. Decides that she's going to, if only because she has no idea what to do with herself during that time otherwise.

She doesn't have a lot of non-work clothes that are presentable. A lot of it is t-shirts and old sweatshirts, most of the few casual dresses she owns having gotten to be too tight recently. But there's a little white dress, a halter one with a dark blue flowers on it, and she finds that in her closet. She'll have to change her bra, too, so she does that and then pulls the dress on, the cotton blend soft against her belly.

"Aww, look who dressed up like a real girl," Jimmy says. Which is a funny thing for him to say, given that few people have ever accused Brenda's wardrobe of being unfeminine.But now Brenda has a job in which being underestimated is rarely an advantage - where dressing in neutral colors and wearing her unruly hair all pinned up saves her time and effort that she would otherwise have to squander convincing someone of her competence.

Maybe she doesn't dress like a girl anymore so much as a woman people shouldn't screw with?

“I’m headin’ out,” Brenda tells them, ignoring Jimmy’s taunt. “Back in a bit.”

It isn’t hard to spot Sharon because she’s wearing the same clothes from earlier. She probably didn’t pack much for such a short trip, wanting to avoid checking a bag. So now Brenda feels self-conscious for having changed.

“Hi there,” Brenda says, when Sharon pulls open the door.

“Thank you for meeting me,” Sharon tells her primly. Glances around the car Brenda cleaned out in a hurry.

“A brought you a bottle of water,” Brenda says. “In the cup holder.”  

It’s been a hot week, especially humid in the afternoons and miserable with the heat radiating off the concrete. The metro area already more crowded than usual with the summer swell of tourists and the influx of people here for the various university graduations. An unending parade of sweaty, tired people milling down the streets.

“Thank you,” Sharon murmurs.

“I hope you like lamb,” Brenda tells her, as she slows pulls the car out, into traffic. “Jimmy already had it cookin’ by the time I came home.”

“I can’t remember the last time I had lamb,” Sharon says. Which would could be read as an answer in the negative as much as the affirmative.

“He and Frank are both great cooks,” Brenda prattles on. “Much better than I’ve ever been.”

“Brenda, I hope. . . ” Sharon begins. Hesitates for a moment and folds her hands into her lap, Brenda sitting at a red light and risking a glance over to the passenger's seat. “I hope you aren’t sacrificing family time in order to entertain me.”

“Family time with the Johnsons ain't real structured,” Brenda chuckles. “Jimmy and Frank are down for a few days and will do a bit of touristy stuff, but mostly we just. . . commune.”

“I didn’t realize you were close with your family,” Sharon says. A polite way of saying that Brenda never really talked about her siblings at work and her relationship with her parents was obviously less than forthcoming.

“Jimmy and I are close,” Brenda tells her. “I don’t have a whole lot in common with my other two brothers, Bobby and Clay. But Bobby’s daughter Charlie is going to grad school not far away and I see her a fair bit.”

“It’s kind of them to invite me,” Sharon says stiffly.

“Oh, they’re thrilled to see you,” Brenda smirks. Pulls the car into her small brick complex and then slides into her parking space. “Jimmy asks about my friend Sharon all the time.”

“This is adorable,” Sharon pronounces, standing in the courtyard that all the condos face.

“I liked it right off the bat," Brenda tells her. "The real estate agent I had kept showin’ me all these townhouses. But even the renovated ones were kinda dark and the whole idea of having a front door-”

“Right on the street,” Sharon finishes with a frown.

“Didn’t appeal," Brenda shakes her head. "But I saw this place and I liked it immediately.”

Brenda pushes open the door. Sees that there are wine glasses put out on the high counter and Jimmy or Frank have already set the table.

“Hell,” Jimmy beams. Comes out of the kitchen right away and offers up his hand. “Nice to see you again, Sharon.”

“Likewise,” Sharon nods. Sounds a bit uneasy. “It’s very kind of you to share your family dinner with me.”

And Brenda cringes, expecting Jimmy to make a joke at her own expense (something about her bad manners or being delighted to share the burden that is Brenda Leigh or _whatever_ ) but he just smiles at Brenda and says, “not at all. It’s nice to get to know my sister’s friends.”

“Sharon,” Frank calls from the kitchen. “Would you like wine? Red or white?”

“White, please,” Sharon says immediately, and Frank looks pointedly at Brenda.

“I already like Sharon more than I like you,” Franks says to Brenda. Hands Sharon a glass of wine.

“Don’t get too attached yet,” Brenda warns. “She’s only here temporarily.”

“I thought you were thinking about moving here,” Frank says to Sharon, who looks startled. Like she’s unsure what to say.

“No job talk,” Brenda shakes her head. And Jimmy’s eyes go wide.

“Did my sister just forbid all discussions of her work?” he asks Frank. “ _My_ sister.”

“Brenda has a wide variety of interests,” Sharon defends. And Brenda stares at her in surprise the same way the boys do. “If I remember correctly, those interests include Hostess, Hershey, and Nestle.”

“Enjoy that glass of wine,” Brenda tells her. “Because it’s the last one I’m gonna serve you after that comment.” But she isn’t really angry and Sharon has to know it because she doesn’t look at all apologetic.

“Sharon,” Frank smiles. “I plan to sit next to you at dinner.”

 

. . .

 

Dinner isn’t awkward the way Brenda feared it would be. There are a few times the conversations stalls, but then Sharon mentions that her daughter Emily is a ballerina in New York and Frank’s eyes go wide. They talk about all her shows, how Jimmy and Frank went to one of them, and how funny that is. Before Brenda knows it, they’re clearing plates and she’s barely gotten a word in edgewise.

“I’m just going to check my messages,” Sharon says. "Is there somewhere. . .?”

“Use my bedroom,” Brenda tells her, and when Sharon hesitates, “or the office. Whichever.”

When Sharon disappears into Brenda’s office, Jimmy nudges her with his shoulder. “I like her,” he says.

“She’s certainly interestin',” Brenda concedes. Busies herself shoving the dishwasher full, plates crammed together in a way that probably won’t allow for any real cleaning to occur.

“What are you. . .” Jimmy shakes his head, stops her. “How do you even function like this?” And Brenda just shrugs. Because she has no idea. Sometimes wonders if she’s made it this far in life by luck alone. Luck, good hair, and her ability to lie herself out of almost anything. 

“Everything ok?” Frank asks, and Brenda thinks he’s talking to her until she sees that Sharon’s reappeared

“Oh, fine,” Sharon replies. “I was just hoping my youngest son had left a message at home.”

“How is Rusty?” Brenda asks. “He still in school?”

“No, he finished,” Sharon tells her. Adds, “he took a job in Philadelphia about five months ago. Local paper there offered him a position.”

“That’s great,” Brenda says. Has to fake the sentiment, no matter how relieved she is that Rusty Beck got the life he deserves. Because Rusty leaving the nest, moving so far away, is probably the last thing Sharon needed after a bad year at work and apparently a failed relationship with Andy Flynn. The last thing Sharon had tethering her to California; a mooring that’s now been cut clean through.

“Hey,” Frank says loudly. “That’s _you_ in these pictures. Is that your son with you?”  

And Brenda freezes when Frank says this to Sharon, because she knows _exactly_ what he’s pointing at now, standing next to Brenda’s fridge. The little set of pictures Brenda never took down, just tried to bury with pictures of Charlie and various family members. A battered takeout menu. Claire’s latest brochure for the ‘Howard House of Holistic Healing (and Waxing)’.

“Oh my god,” Sharon says. “It is.” Steps up close to the fridge and tugs the column of pictures down. “This was three, four Christmases ago?” And then she turns to Brenda, pictures clutched to her chest. “I can’t believe you kept this!”

“I thought they were cute,” Brenda manages, burying her head back in the dishwasher. And when she stands up again Sharon is still looking at her, face soft, silly pictures of her and Rusty still clasped to her breast.

Brenda drives Sharon back to her hotel. It doesn’t make sense for Sharon to take the metro and then walk several blocks, not when traffic is light at this time of evening  and Brenda can just as easily drive her.

“It’s no trouble,” Brenda assures her and Sharon nods after a few beats.

“Alright,” she says. “Thank you.”

They’re already into Arlington when Sharon says, “I’m sorry I missed the message you left me. On my home phone.”

“Oh,” Brenda says, surprised. “That’s okay.”

“I don’t check it often,” Sharon explains. “I only checked it tonight because I was hoping to hear from Rusty.”

“Understandable.”

Sharon looks at her like she’s waiting for Brenda to say something. But Brenda just stays quiet because she has too many thoughts in her head to try to filter them; too many irrational, nonsensical things floating in front of her eyes to try and pick out one single appropriate item to verbalize to Sharon.

“Was there something you needed?” Sharon asks her. “You said it wasn’t about my application with Homeland Security.”

Brenda switches on her left turn signal. Watches as the arrow on her dash blinks and blinks. “I think,” Brenda begins slowly, “I just wanted to talk to you. Maybe catch up for a spell.”

“Well I’m sorry I missed you,” Sharon says again, this time sounding like she really is.

Traffic going through Foggy Bottom isn’t bad, but it slows down when they get closer to Georgetown. It’s a weekday but people are still flocking to bars and restaurants. Clustered groups of college students darting across the street.

“Sharon,” Brenda says. “I’m not. . . I’m not real great at makin' female friends.”

She thinks that maybe Sharon will admit she isn’t either, that they’ll commiserate over having spent decades working in environments that are overwhelmingly male. But instead Sharon sighs audibly and says, “when I stopped hearing from you, I just assumed you weren’t interested in staying in contact.”

And a sharp pain twists in Brenda’s stomach, because she has no idea how to tell Sharon how interested she actually was. That the promise of a friendship with Sharon seemed tantalizing but elusive. That she memorized Sharon’s handwriting, the looped way she writes her a’s and e’s, but could never pick up the phone to call because she was always too scared.

But scared of what? It seems silly now, as nothing about today has been especially difficult aside from the buildup Brenda produced in her own head.

“Lack of interest wasn’t the problem,” Brenda tells her. And then, “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.”

“When do you learn to apologize and sound sincere?” Sharon asks her, smirking. And Brenda bites her tongue as she pulls up to Sharon’s hotel. Doesn’t point out that Sharon has said ‘thank you’ more times today than she ever did in the entire time they worked together before.

“People do change,” she says instead. Unlocks Sharon’s door and leans back in her seat, Sharon staring at her in a way that isn’t unfriendly but still comes off as barbed.

“I know,” Sharon says and opens the door. “It’s what makes some serial killers so hard to catch.”

Brenda doesn’t put her hand up and shove her out on her ass, but it's a close call. Waits for her to close the car door and then walk safely into the lobby of the hotel before she pulls away, kind of annoyed. Drives all the way home before her phone lights up with a new text.

 _Sometimes I’m still a terrible bitch_ , Sharon’s text admits.

Brenda laughs out loud.

 _That’s a relief_ , she pecks out on her phone.  _I might not recognize you otherwise._

. . .

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

* * *

 _And the flowers in their bed_   
_They're drooping and dying and fading away._   
_This weather's no good for growing things._

\- Vance Joy, “Best That I Can”

* * *

 

 

 

Brenda can’t sleep.

She stayed up with Frank and Jimmy for a few hours after she’d dropped Sharon off at her hotel. The three of talking and playing a board game. Drinking another glass of wine. But it's midnight now and the condo is quiet, her bedroom door closed. Only the white noise of the AC kicking on and the dim light from the digital clock by her bed.

And it's just the facial cream she uses at night smells like a flower that’s name she can’t _quite_ remember, and she has a hangnail on the pinky finger of her left hand. And she’s so tired - so painfully tired as she lays in bed with her nail stinging every time her finger brushes against her soft sheets. Her mind chasing after a name that keeps outpacing her thoughts, always around the next bend before her memory can grasp it.

She just can’t sleep.

She doesn’t know what this feeling is. Wonders why she feels so on edge as she chews on the nail that already hurts, thinks about the blossom she can't name. She flips her pillow over, decides it'll be easier to sleep on the side of it that her lotioned face hasn't already been pressed against.

Better if she's not lying cheek to cheek with a question she can't answer.

 

. . .

 

Brenda doesn't know if she'll see Sharon much the second day of her fly-out, but she goes into work and the first person she sees is Sharon. She's standing in the lobby in a black blazer and apparently sees Brenda's reflection in the elevator doors because she spins right on her heel.

"Good morning," Sharon says. Hands Brenda a Starbucks cup. And though there isn't a Starbucks anywhere near campus and this was an unnecessarily burdensome gesture for Sharon to make, Brenda just doesn't care.

"Thank God," she says. Grabs the coffee and immediately starts to drink it.

"You're welcome," Sharon frowns. Because, yeah, that was kind of rude.

"Thank you," Brenda offers belatedly. And then, "is this -"

"A mocha," Sharon finishes. "Educated guess."

"'My, my. You _are_ good at stringin’ together facts." She smiles as she says it and Sharon glances over to make sure that joke was actually friendly. "They give you another full day of fun?"

"Something like that," Sharon says as an elevator opens.

They stand in silence for a moment, Sharon pressing the the button for their floor and Brenda looking at the teal silk blouse Sharon is wearing under her blazer.  Not a color Brenda remembers her ever favoring.

"Thank you again for dinner last night," Sharon tells her as the doors open. And it's the perfect opening for Brenda to invite her out again. Tell her that Jimmy and Frank have tickets to the Kennedy Center tonight and Brenda's not going with them. But twice in a row seems pushy rather than polite. So Brenda just stands there, trying to make herself smile.

"It was nice havin' you," she tells Sharon, and then the doors open and Sharon has to go down the hall to talk to people who aren't Brenda.

"See you later," Sharon says to her, and Brenda stands outside her office door, watching Sharon march down to where Ed and two other people are waiting.

She goes into her office, flips on the light and powers up her computer. Wonders why she can never learn a lesson the first time.

Ed pops into Brenda's office right before lunch, and she gets hopeful that he's about to invite her to something with Sharon. But he just steps in to tell her schedule stuff.

"I need you to be me at that thing today," Ed says. And Brenda pulls up the calendar to see what thing he's talking about.

"Got it," she nods.

"Thanks. I have to go to a lunch with Sharon Raydor and HR. But I'll get together with you before the end of the day so you can catch me up."

Brenda tries not to let her face fall at that.

The day drags on and she finds herself checking her watch more than average. She goes to Ed's budget thing but her presence is mostly symbolic representation. The info is nothing new, just cuts overlaid with talking points that even the person presenting them doesn't believe. So Brenda's mind wanders as she chews on the end of her pen, dangles one high heel off her toe without letting it drop to the floor.

When she comes back to her office she finds that her administrative assistant has left a brownie on her desk. Two kinds of fudge from the looks of it, with walnuts and frosting on top. And Brenda hums with pleasure. Tells herself that being liked by other people has its benefits.

She saves half the brownie for later on in the day, when she'll really need a boost. Is just about to dig into the second half when Ed reappears. "Didn't know you had chocolate," he jokes. "Sorry to interrupt."

"As long as you know you won't have my full attention until I finish this," she teases. Eats a chunk of frosting covered walnut.

"I read you email," he tells her as she eats. "Anything else I should know?"

Her mouth is full so just shakes her head at him, gives him a sour look to confirm that his being there would have been a waste of his time.

"Sorry," Ed apologizes. And Brenda smiles at him now instead of simply grunting, because this is one of the things she's learned from Ed. Apologizing despite that something isn't your fault - isn't even in your control - because doing so is a way to acknowledge the other person's wasted time. Not everything boils down to admissions of guilt, Brenda's finally sees.

"In other news," Ed says and closes the door. "I just spent the entire day with your Captain Raydor and I'm telling you as my number two that I'm going to do everything in my power to get that woman here."

"Good," Brenda tells him. Because this doesn't surprise her, has expected Ed to come to exactly that conclusion. Sharon is smart and accomplished but she also has an intimidation factor that Ed could use to the division's advantage. "We need her muscle."

"Exactly," Ed says. "And I know this is complicated for you because she's a former colleague-"

"It's not complicated," she interrupts him, and he gives her a dubious look because that sounded more defensive than she intended.

"Even better," he arches his eyebrows. Pushes his slipping glasses up with one finger. "Because. . . Look, Brenda. I know you're not the world's biggest people person but I need your help here. She clearly respects you, so you need to do some lobbying for us."

"We're courting her," Brenda says slowly, because she already knows that. Ed has previously made this point. "I understand."

"This place _sucks_ at keeping qualified candidates on the line," Ed shoots back, "and they're sucking more than usual right now. Plus I'm part of the hiring process so there's only so much I'm allowed to do. But _you_ aren’t. So this is no longer us courting her. This is _you_ courting her."

"Me," Brenda repeats.

"You," Ed says solemnly. Makes it sound like a threat, too.  

“Okay then,” Brenda manages, and Ed opens her door back up. Walks right out as Brenda sits blinking and watching him.

Sharon shows up at Brenda’s door at the end day, just like yesterday. Only this time Brenda realizes that this means Sharon genuinely wants to talk to her. Feels a little braver.

“It go well?” Brenda asks her, even if she already knows the answer.

“It did,” Sharon says. “I think so. . . Well, you would probably know better than me.”

“I would,” Brenda confirms, gives her a sly smile that seems to make Sharon’s posture relax a bit.

“I was thinking,” Sharon says, “perhaps we could do something tonight  given that your brother and Frank already have other plans?” And when Brenda doesn’t say anything, just stands there staring, Sharon awkwardly clears her throat. “Frank told me they had tickets to _Madame Butterfly._ Last night. At dinner. When we were talking.”

“Right,” Brenda finally says. Because when had Frank told Sharon that? Maybe when Brenda went to use the bathroom? “They do. And we should. . . Do something, I mean.”

“I  could use a couple of hours to rest and make a few calls,” Sharon admits. “But after that?”

“That’d be good,” Brenda says.

“Alright,” Sharon nods. “I’ll call you later and we can decide where to meet.”

“Wait,” Brenda says. “How are you gettin’ back to your hotel?”

“Taxi,” Sharon replies. Furrows her brow in a way that shows she actually has wrinkles. “Same as yesterday.”

“I’ll drive you back instead,” Brenda shakes her head. “You’re not far out of my way.”

It isn’t exactly true. Georgetown isn’t that far removed from Brenda’s usual route home, but like so many things in DC the time the detour will cost her has nothing to do with distance and everything to do with traffic. And maybe Sharon sees through the lie and maybe she doesn’t. She accepts either way, busying herself on her phone as Brenda saves her files, shuts everything down. Gathers the belongings she’s scattered around the room as she went about her day.

“Is this of any priority?” Sharon asks her, picking up one of those mango-chile suckers Ed got Brenda a while back. And isn’t, Brenda having plunked it down on that shelf weeks ago, but Brenda has zero desire to admit this to Sharon. Plus it does sound kind of good right now.

“It sure is,” Brenda winks.

Her administrative assistant hasn’t left yet, so Brenda makes sure to stop and thank her for the brownie. They make brief small talk about how awful the budget meeting was, Sharon standing off to the side and shifting her purse from shoulder to shoulder.

“You’re well liked here,” Sharon observes when they make it outside. Sounds understandably surprised.

“Oh, I’m liked by some. Hated by others.  But I’d be failin’ at my job if everyone liked me. So.”  And she shrugs. Not like there was any chance of Brenda being universally loved even if she wanted to be.

“I know what that’s like,” Sharon murmurs.

They walk along in silence for a while. It’s hot and they’re both wearing layered professional clothing, so by the time they make it to the car Brenda just wants to claw her blazer off. Doesn’t understand how Sharon doesn’t look sweaty and miserable, too.

“Thank God,” Sharon says, when Brenda’s car AC kicks in. They haven’t pulled out yet and Sharon isn’t buckled. She sticks her face right in front of the vent and keeps it there for a while.

“You okay?” Brenda asks. Can’t help but chuckle.

“Does the humidity not bother you?” Sharon demands.

“I’m from Georgia. There’s humid and then there’s _humid_. It’s the heat I mind. Same as LA.”

“Is the whole summer like this?” Sharon asks. Slumps back against the seat.

“Pretty much,” Brenda admits. “But spring and fall here are worth it. We make do.”

"You say so," Sharon says. Fans herself with a paper from her purse.

Maybe a hot flash, Brenda thinks. She gets them herself and there are times when the combination of the summer heat and her body doing its own rendition of a sauna is enough to make her think that she's in hell. That maybe she died without noticing it and now it's time to pay for the thousands of lies she's told.

But then again, she thinks, Sharon's older than she is. Maybe she doesn't even get hot flashes anymore?

"Do you always drive to work?" Sharon asks her. Sounds faintly disapproving.

"I used to take the metro in when I first got  the condo,” Brenda admits. Shifts a little in her seat. “It’s just not real convenient with DHS bein’ so far from a metro stop.”

Sharon doesn’t say anything to this. Looks straight out the window at the long line of traffic already backing up in front of Brenda’s car. And Brenda tries not to feel defensive, even though she’s pretty sure Sharon is the kind of person who never forgets to recycle. Always sorts her paper from her plastics and probably even composts. Because there are times when Brenda wants to be that person, too. Bought an expensive condo in Alexandria partly for the ease of access to mass transit, the comforting anonymity of being among the dozens of people waiting for a train.

It took three months before she broke down and started driving to work. Realized that her years in LA have made her prefer the semi-private hell of traffic to the public purgatory of bus stops and crowded subway cars.

Sharon turns on the radio without asking and Brenda tries not to frown. Suspects Sharon might be curious as to what her pre-sets are. But maybe Brenda only thinks that because it’s the kind of niggling curiosity that would make her turn on a radio in a car that wasn’t hers?

“What time's your flight tomorrow morning?” Brenda asks, fingers clenching around the steering wheel.

“Not until mid-day,” Sharon tells her. “I took a full three days.”

“Do they know you’re. . .”

“No,” Sharon says quickly. “No, they don’t.” Sounds preemptively annoyed when she continues, “I might not have a right to ask this, but I know you still speak with David Gabriel. I’d appreciate it if -”

“The application process is confidential,” Brenda cuts her off. “And even if it weren’t, I’m not so dense as to fail to apprehend that this must be a difficult transition for you to be contemplatin’.”

“Of course,” Sharon says coolly. Turns her head to look out the passenger-side window. “My mistake.”

 

. . .

 

Frank and Jimmy are already out by the time Brenda gets home, and she’s grateful for this. Finds the note they left her apologizing that they’ll be out late,  the container of lasagna waiting for her in the fridge. And she is hungry, the only thing she’s eaten since breakfast being that brownie at lunchtime, but she stares at the neatly packaged lasagna and the blue tupperware she doesn’t remember buying and then after a minute closes the fridge again. She’s just too mad to eat.

Why on earth does Sharon have to be so mean and difficult when Brenda’s trying to be so nice? And why does she let herself get so riled up by Sharon’s digs?

She unbuttons her blouse because she’s all alone in the condo and even in here, in the air conditioning, it feels like there’s a permanent pool of sweat sitting at the base of her spine. Goes into her bedroom and shimmies out of her skirt and then her nylons. Leaves everything in a pile on the floor when she goes to run a lukewarm shower.

She comes back out a while later, anger now unraveling into deflation. Hears her phone chirp with a text she doesn’t move to look at immediately because it’s probably Sharon. So she dries her hair instead. Straightens it out with a big round brush and then just stands there with the hot air blowing in her face - chapping her cheeks and making her lips feel painfully dry until she can’t stand it anymore.

The text is of course from Sharon, but Brenda slumps down on her bed when she reads, _Not sure I’m up to much tonight._ Because that’s about right, she thinks darkly. Tosses her phone across the bed. Lays down for a few minutes with her eyes closed, towel wrapped loosely around her tired body.

“Okay,” she says to herself. Pushes herself off the bed. Doesn’t take her phone with her because she doesn’t think there’s a reason to now. No reason to even send Sharon a reply excusing her from the social obligation.

It’s two hours later and she’s sitting on the couch, picking at cold lasagna in her pajamas when there’s a knock at the door. And she thinks maybe it’s more of those poor Mormon boys being forced to bicycle in this heat, because everyone in Brenda’s life has a key that they freely use and her neighbors never bother her for anything.

“Did your phone die?” Sharon demands, after Brenda opens the door.

“My phone?”

“I’ve been sending you text messages,” Sharon informs her. Comes right in and sets down the bags she’s holding.

“I didn’t see them,” Brenda says slowly. “What’s all this?”

“Takeout,” Sharon huffs. And Brenda glares at her because, yes, that’s rather obvious. “I didn’t know what you’d like so I got a a few different things from the restaurant down the street.”

“Champagne?” Brenda asks, pulling the dark bottle out of a smaller brown bag.

“It pairs well with the crab cakes I got it,” Sharon informs. Starts unloading boxes of food. Looks back at Brenda when she’s done and squints. “It’s also one of those things I associate with happy occasions. So maybe if we’re drinking champagne I can manage to be less of a bitch and you can stop acting like I’m still the wicked witch from FID.”

“That’s fair,” Brenda decides, hands on her hips. But doesn’t stop glaring quite yet. “Though I’m gonna tell you right now that sparking wines are not everyone’s friend.”

“You don’t like champagne?” Sharon asks, sounding scandalized, and Brenda contemplates her answer.

“I like it just fine,” she finally decides. “But four years of livin’ in a sorority house taught me that a girl shouldn’t ever trust champagne or tequila.”

“You lived in a sorority house,” Sharon snorts, pulling out plates after she finds the right cabinet. “Why am I not surprised by that?”

“Here, Sharon,” Brenda says. Pops the cork off the champagne with no trouble at all. “Why don’t you go ahead and start drinkin’ now? Get a start on that whole ‘less of a bitch’ thing you mentioned.”

Brenda isn’t exactly kidding but still Sharon barks out laughter. Smiles at Brenda as she dishes them both up food and then pours herself a glass.

“None for me yet,” Brenda shakes her head, when Sharon starts to pour one for her. “Not on an empty stomach.”

“You really didn’t see my texts?” Sharon asks her now, staring over at the leftover lasagna on the coffee table and then eyeing Brenda’s soft cotton pajama pants.

“I didn’t hear my phone go off,” Brenda tells her honestly. Closes the tupperware back up and then walks it over to the fridge.  “It’s been in the other room and I had the news on for a while.”

Sharon’s face goes soft at this, like she’s relieved. Like maybe she thought Brenda was deliberately ignoring her because of their exchange on the ride home. Not an unreasonable assumption, Brenda decides. She does have a long, documented history of cowardice in her personal life.

“Brenda,” Sharon says, sounding grave now. “Please tell me the truth. . . Is my age going to be an obstacle in my being offered this job with DHS?”

“Your age?” Brenda repeats, because this isn’t the question she was expecting. “No, not really. I mean they’re gonna be nervous that you already have a pension and they could be spending their resources hiring you only for you to retire two years down the road. But I think if you sell yourself as a workaholic, that’ll smooth over.”

“You think?” Sharon asks. Seems nervous and open in a way that Brenda only briefly got to glimpse, the day before at lunch.

“I do,” Brenda nods. “Our part of DHS is full of people who could have retired a long time ago but kept takin’ promotions instead.” People like Ed who keep promising their families that they’ll retire soon enough but never actually do. People like Brenda who don’t have a spouse to whom they have to make those false promises. Who’ll just grow old and die at their desks. “If it’s something you’re worried about,” she adds, “I can make start makin’ a few well placed comments.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Sharon tells her. Shakes her head.

“It’s not a hard thing to do,” Brenda shrugs. “They’d be stupid not offer you the job because you’d be a real asset, and I think it’s the least you deserve.”

“Thank you,” Sharon says eventually. Like this simple act of loyalty surprises her. Surprises Sharon coming from anyone or specifically from Brenda herself, Brenda won’t hazard a guess.

“Let’s eat on the couch,” Brenda announces, feeling uncomfortable, and Sharon gives her a judgy look. “My home, my rules.”

Sharon rolls her eyes. Grabs a napkin and follows Brenda into the living room.

“This couch is quite comfortable,” Sharon compliments, napkin draped across her lap.

“It is,” Brenda manages around her mouthful of crab cake. “It’s the whole reason I bought the furniture this place was staged with. I wanted the couches.”

“You bought this place furnished?” Sharon’s eyebrows go up. “Well, that makes more sense.”

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?” Brenda shoots back.

“That it’s not a color palette I’d associate with you,” Sharon informs her. “It's all neutrals.”

Brenda looks around all the cream and beige, sees Sharon’s point. “Yeah,” she says. “I kept tellin’ myself I would buy things to add some bright accent colors but. . . I don’t know. I never know where to start with that kind of thing.”

“Maybe some muted pinks? You’re rather fond of pink, as I recall.” And it almost- _almost_ \- doesn’t sound condescending when Sharon says it, so Brenda forks a bite of loaded mashed potatoes to stop herself from snarking back.

“You don’t strike me a loaded mashed potatoes kinda girl,” Brenda points out a few moments later. Inwardly cringes as soon as it leaves her mouth. So much for not giving it back to Sharon.

“Comfort food,” Sharon tells her. “I don’t succumb often but that doesn’t mean I’m immune.”

“Family dinners in Atlanta haven’t been the same since my mama died,” Brenda murmurs thoughtfully. “Jimmy makes these gourmet potatoes that are _sinfully_ good and we all gobble them up. But. . . it’s just not the same without my mama’s lumpy potatoes.”

“No,” Sharon agrees. Is clearly about to say something else when her phone goes off.

“If that’s Rusty tell him I said hello,” Brenda says. Stands up to get herself a glass of champagne now that she has some real food to cushion it.

And she’s isn’t trying to look at Sharon’s phone, but when the picture of Andy Flynn pops up she can’t help but stop and stare. Because it’s a picture of Andy wearing sunglasses and a Dodgers hat, a goofy grin on his face. Like he knew Sharon was taking a picture of him but was so happy at the time, so happy to be wherever he was with Sharon, that he didn’t even mind.

“Not Rusty,” Sharon says simply. Clicks the ringer off and shoves the phone into her purse with some amount of force.

It would be easy to let it drop, go back to comfortable chatter about furniture and home cooking. But Brenda knows that tomorrow Sharon’s going to have to get on a plane and fly back to a place where she has no family left at home and fewer friendly faces at work. Spend her time in a long series of small spaces with a man who’s probably angry at her or maybe disappointed. A man who will look at her in a way that makes it clear all he sees now are his own failed expectations.

“Are you not takin’ his call because I’m here?” Brenda breaks the ice. “Or because you don’t want to talk to him at all?”

Sharon fixes her with any icy look before she squints behind her glasses. Gives her a mean look and says, “I see Gabriel’s kept you well informed.”

“One of the many reasons I like David is that he’s not prone to gossip,” Brenda says. Sits back down with a full glass and sets the bottle right in the center of the coffee table. “But I did ask after you a while ago and he didn’t lie, so if you’d like to be mad at someone I’m a much better target than David.”

“Sorry,” Sharon closes her eyes. “That was. . . uncharitable.”

“It isn’t my business,” Brenda allows. Smiles ruefully at Sharon. “But I lived through a few failed workplace romances myself and am not as horrible a listener as you might think.”

She thinks Sharon’s a guarded enough person that she’s going to turn her down. Say a few things that don’t actually reveal anything, then change the subject back to casual territory.

Instead Sharon rakes a hand through her thick hair. Pulls off her glasses and begins to slowly clean them when she says, “I don’t even have a right to be mad him. This is my fault. . . It’s my fault that I kept getting scared and pushing him away.”

Brenda doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t try to coax more information. Sips her bubbly wine a little too fast and waits for Sharon to decide whether to stop or keep pushing forward.

“Andy has a lot in common with my ex-husband,” Sharon tells her. “Not when it counts. Not when the cards are down. But sometimes we’d be alone or out at dinner and he’d make some joke that Jackson would make. And I’d -” Sharon pauses, motions to her throat like there’s something caught there. “I’d panic. I’d feel like I couldn’t breathe.”

“Don’t take this the wrong,” Brenda says. “But are you sure leavin’ the LAPD is what you want? Because if applyin’ for this job is mostly about Andy, I have to remind you that he’s a grown man and if he can’t handle workin’ with you, that’s his problem.”

“It’s not just Andy,” Sharon shakes her head. Her eyes get glossy  and Brenda’s afraid she might actually cry. Freezes in her seat because she has no idea what to do if Sharon Raydor actually starts crying on her couch. “Everything feels like it’s telling me that it’s time to move on, but on the other hand it feels so selfish to pick up and move.”

“Selfish?” Brenda puzzles. “Major Crimes will survive, Sharon.”

“I mean my kids,” Sharon corrects her. “They’re grown but I’m still home base for them. The condo I live in is the first stable place Rusty ever called a home.”

“I don’t think being a good parent requires you to sacrifice your own happiness,” Brenda shakes her head. “I can’t imagine Rusty would want you to make that kind of choice just so he can go on havin’ holidays in the same place.”

“You don’t have kids,” Sharon points out. And isn’t malicious, but it still hurts when someone comes back with this. Twists something cold and sharp into Brenda’s belly, because it’s painful to think that she would have made a bad mother even if kids were something she expressly wanted. Hard to think that she was always too selfish, too consumed by her work. Inept at doing so many of the normal adult things that are required  to be a decent parent.

“You’re right,” Brenda says. Refills their empty glasses. “I don’t have kids.”

They don’t talk for a while after that. Both of them working their way through the rest of the food and Sharon looking tired and maybe sad.

“Brenda,” Sharon says. Stops like she’s trying to pick her words carefully before she keeps on talking. “I’m sorry you lost Fritz. I can’t imagine what that was like for you.”

“We were headin’ for divorce,” Brenda tells her. Doesn’t move from where she’s presently slumped against one arm of the couch. “I don’t think we would have stayed married. . . If he hadn’t died.”

She’s never admitted this to anyone before, and she has no idea why she’s telling this to Sharon now. Doesn’t understand the cavalier tone that’s coming out of her own mouth, because this isn’t a casual thing. This is a festering truth that has grown into a secret. A secret she has hidden from Jimmy and Charlie and everyone she loves. Not deliberately at first, more that she couldn’t find the right words when she tried. But then she could find them, eventually, and the idea of ever speaking them simply became unfathomable.

And she knows it’s crazy, this feeling she has that she’s this walking fraud of a widow. Because she knows her own heart and knows her own mind, knows with certainty that the shattering grief she felt when Fritz died was sincere and real. Remembers crying for days and losing her breath just standing and brushing her teeth, realizing that her best friend in the world was gone, the man she shared a home with was gone, and he wouldn’t be coming back. Not even if she made sure to put her dirty dishes in the dishwasher and hang her jackets up, straight and proper, everyday for the rest of her life.

“He wasn’t any less your partner,” Sharon sighs, but doesn’t look surprised at the admission. Sharon lived through  her own miserable marriage, Brenda realizes. Could probably spot the symptoms in someone like Fritz a mile away.

The idea of that chafes as much as the proffered absolution soothes. Brenda gulps the rest of her glass down but doesn’t move to refill it because the bottle’s already empty.

“We’re out of champagne,” Sharon laments.

“We are,” Brenda agrees, relieved.

“Have any tequila on hand?” Sharon asks, not entirely joking from the sound of it. Looks over at Brenda’s kitchen.

“Probably,” Brenda cringes.

“Hmm,” Sharon says. Doesn’t push farther than that.

“Okay,” Brenda resigns herself. Pushes herself off the couch with some difficulty and then looks back Sharon sternly. “But the ground rules are no cryin’ and no gettin’ sick.”

“I’ll be fine,” Sharon smirks. “ _I_ wasn’t in a sorority.”

“Probably ‘cause none of them would take you,” Brenda mutters. Rummages in a lower cabinet for the bottle of expensive silver tequila she’s pretty sure she shoved way in the back, more than a year ago.

“Will you bring ice too?” Sharon asks her. “I need mine chilled.”

And Brenda could make a joke about that, but it’s too easy, plus she can't stomach warm tequila either. So instead she complains, “I’d planned on doin’ work tonight. And now I won’t even be able to send inconsequential emails.”

“Oh,” Sharon says, bravado gone. “Do you want me to leave and let you be productive?”

“No,” Brenda laughs. Sets the tequila bottle down and hands Sharon her tumbler filled with ice. “Besides, this is technically me workin’.”

“How so?” Sharon chuckles.

“Ed ordered me to court you on behalf of the division.”

She means it to be funny, a shared confidence, but then she looks back over and sees that Sharon’s face is completely expressionless.  

Well, so much for that.

“Court me?” Sharon repeats, her tone pointed. And Brenda doesn’t have any place else to hide except at the bottom of her own tumbler, so she slams the small shot she poured herself. No ice, no salt, no lime. Fights the urge to cough when the burn hits her throat, spreads throughout her chest.

“Uh huh,” she nods finally. Because Sharon keeps sitting there and looking up at her with those intense green eyes and those long, unblinking lashes.

“No offense, honey," Sharon says, "but if this is your attempt at courting a girl . .  you suck at it.”

And then Sharon pours her another shot. Pushes the glass back in Brenda's direction with wicked smile that makes Brenda’s chest burn all over again. 

. . .

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

* * *

 

 _Well hold on, my darling._   
_This mess was yours,_   
_now your mess is mine._   


\- Vance Joy, “Mess is Mine”

 

* * *

 

 

 

Brenda opens her eyes and groans.

It’s almost 7am and it’s a work day, she needs to get up and shower soon. But the very idea of standing makes her want to throw up.

Sharon left sometime before midnight last night, after Brenda pressed her into a cab, both of them decidedly drunk. And Brenda cringes now, pulling the blankets back over her head, because she remembers telling Sharon to call her once she’s back in LA. Remembers telling her that _repeatedly,_ Sharon standing with the taxi door open and smiling real sweetly at her.

She’s pretty sure she had more to drink than Sharon, but it’s hard to remember now, through the headache and her thickening haze of embarrassment. And she almost- _almost_ \- wishes she was drunk enough not to remember any of it, except that would mean she’d no longer have the memory of Sharon throwing her arms around her, right before Sharon slid, less than elegantly, into the cab. Wouldn’t recall the way Sharon felt smaller and warmer than she ever expected, Sharon’s breath hot on Brenda’s neck and her perfume making her head spin.

That last part was probably the tequila, she tells herself. Makes herself finally get out of bed. Puts her one foot right in front of the other until, mercifully, inside the bathroom. Empties her entire stomach into the toilet and then takes the longest shower of her life.

“She lives,” Jimmy says, when she ventures out into the living room. She’s dressed and has her makeup on, but her hair she’s just twisted up wet. She doesn’t have it in her to do anything else. “I was worried you killed yourself with tragic choices last night.”

“What?” Brenda manages, pulling up short. Jimmy’s cooking in the kitchen, eggs from the smell of it. And breakfast is normally her favorite meal and she loves her brother’s cooking, but Lord help her if she’s going any closer to the source of that sickening smell.

“We put the empty bottles in the recycling for you,” Jimmy tells her. “Champagne _and_ tequila, Brenda Leigh? Do you have a death wish?”

“I do now,” Brenda mutters.

“That bad?” Jimmy asks, sounding sympathetic. She winces as she nods. “Did you already take some medicine?”

“Few minutes ago. . . When I was sure I wouldn’t throw it up.”

“Let me make you some juice,” Jimmy says.  “I’m sure you don’t want anything solid right now.”

“Thank you,” Brenda says weakly. Feels relieved Frank isn’t here to tease her. “Frank out for his morning run?”

“Like clockwork,” Jimmy confirms. “Same as always.”

Frank runs five miles every morning, no matter the weather or where he’s at. And Brenda has all kinds of snide comments stored up in her head about Frank’s insistence on the ritual, but sometimes she thinks it would be nice to wake up and feel that kind of singular, simple purpose.

She wonders if Sharon ever runs. She seems like she’d be the type.

“Here,” Jimmy says, handing her a cold glass. “Fresh squeezed oranges for my sister, the poor decision maker.”

“I didn’t even know I had a juicer,” Brenda admits, and Jimmy glares at her.

“I would love to think that’s a joke.” He shakes his head and says, “please don’t correct me.”

Brenda rolls her eyes.

She feels a little bit better by the time she has to leave for work. She managed to eat some dry toast and between food and meds, she doesn’t feels like lukewarm death now. Sliding into a warm car doesn’t help matters, however. The parking spaces in her complex come with carports and the heat isn’t miserable yet, but her car is still warmer than comfortable when she climbs into it and it feels like forever until the AC kicks in.

She’d like to think she isn’t alone in her misery, that Sharon is somewhere suffering too. But then she remembers that Sharon’s flying out today, that she’s going to have to spend hours in airports and planes, and no part of her is petty enough to wish a hangover on someone who’s traveling.

She thinks about sending Sharon a text to find out for herself. But then she remembers last night, remembers demanding that Sharon call her when she’s back in LA and she flushes all over again. She’s always been a friendly drunk, Brenda reflects with a cringe.

Brenda goes the first five hours of work, trying to hide how she’s feeling. And she thinks she’s doing a fine job of it. But then Ed slides into her office with a bag of food for her and she feels her stomach flip.

“I had a late breakfast,” she lies, and Ed smiles at her.

“And I here I thought you’d had a late liquid dinner,” Ed announces. Sounds amused rather than ticked.

“I thought I was hidin’ it well,” Brenda groans, puts her head down on her desk.

“You are not,” Ed informs her. “But everyone else thinks you’re a dutiful civil servant who dragged herself into the office despite having the flu, so I wouldn’t worry.”

“I’ m sorry,” Brenda sighs.

“Did you miss a meeting? A phone conference? Anything important?”

“No. No, of course not,” Brenda says.

“Then consider this uncharacteristic lapse in judgment merely a mild amusement for you boss,” Ed tells her. Puts the greasy smelling bag of food on her desk and sits down the a chair across from her.

“I appreciate the thought,” Brenda says. “but I don’t think I can eat.”

“It’s a burger and fries. You need something greasy in your stomach.  Just try a few bites.”

Brenda reaches into the bag and pulls out a couple fries. They’re not hot anymore, but Brenda thinks that might be better. Pops one tentatively into her mouth.

“Whiskey?” Ed guesses. “It looks like a whiskey hangover from this side of the desk.”

“Tequila,” Brenda corrects him. She won’t tell him the full version because Ed is still her boss and it’s shortsighted to reveal the depth of her own idiocy.

“Tequila,” Ed repeats. Gives a low whistle. “I don’t suppose you had company in that bad particular decision?”

“A lady does not drink and tell,” Brenda smiles, pulling out the paper-wrapped burger. But Ed raises his eyebrows at her and Brenda shrugs. “You ordered me to court her. Remember?”

“So I did,” Ed smiles again, and gets up to leave. “Tequila,” he repeats again, on his way to the door. “Wouldn’t have picked Sharon Raydor as the type.”

Between Ed’s visit and the burger, Brenda feels in decidedly better spirits. She finishes her lunch, wipes her hands on the yellow paper napkins and reaches for her phone.

She’s surprised to see that she has two unread texts waiting there, both of them from Sharon. One must have come in while she was in a meeting earlier in the morning, but she isn’t sure how she missed the second one, as her phone was in her purse as she sat a foot away at her desk.

 _Are you alive?_ the first one reads. _Presently wishing for my own swift, merciful death._

The second was only an hour ago, probably when Sharon was about to get on the plane. Brenda smirks when she reads _,_ _I can’t help but suspect from your silence that your hangover did in fact kill you. Will do my utmost to say say nice things about now that you’re not alive to defend yourself._

Sharon won’t be able to read any texts for hours, but Brenda doesn’t wait to text her back, typing out, _sorry to disappoint but still very much alive._ Thinks to add in another text,  _was in a world of pain for the better of the day._

It’ll be hours before she’ll get any kind of reply, so Brenda sets to work again. Goes home at the end of the day and debates evening plans with Jimmy and Frank.

“You still wantin’ to try that new fusion place down the street?” Brenda asks them.

“You said you didn’t want to go there,” Frank reminds her. “You said it looked stuffy and overpriced.”

“It probably is,” Brenda shrugs. “But we can still go if you want.”

Frank and Jimmy look at each other in shock.

“ _Stop that_ ,” Brenda demands. “Do you wanna go or not?”

“We do,” Jimmy answers immediately. Never one to question a Johnson woman’s good mood.

“So let’s call Charlie,” Brenda says. “She’s plannin’ on goin’ with us tonight.”

Jimmy phones Charlie and  when (predictably) she doesn’t answer, begins typing her a text.

“Kids and their insistence on not answering phone calls,” Jimmy fumes. “You just _know_ she has it right next to her and is going to reply immediately to my text.”

“Probably,” Brenda says. Because Charlie answer her own calls, but even that Charlie resents.

Brenda jumps right off the couch when her phone chirps.

“Is that her?” Frank asks. Brenda doesn’t say anything, hoping that waiting text isn’t from the niece she loves so much.

“No,” Brenda says and smiles. “Not Charlie.”

_You earned every ounce of pain. You drank far more than I did._

Sharon’s right, Brenda knows. But she only did so because Sharon kept pouring.

 _I was hanging out with a bad influence_ , Brenda replies. Smiles wider when she immediately sees the three little dots that mean Sharon’s already typing a reply.

_You should conduct more conversations over text. At least in writing you drop that cloying accent._

“Why that . . .”  Brenda trails off when she looks up to see two sets of eyes staring at her hard.

“Who’s that?” Frank asks.

“And what are they saying to make you smile that much?” Jimmy demands.

“Just Sharon,” Brenda says casually. “Bein’ her usual bitchy self.”

“Just Sharon,” Frank repeats.

“Who you drink tequila with,” Jimmy adds.

“And champagne,” Frank says.

“Together,” Jimmy reminds.

“What’s your point?” Brenda grouses, feeling more ire than this really deserves. Because the three of them are always teasing each other, this isn’t out of the ordinary. But right now it pisses Brenda off. “You were so worried about your poor widow of a sister makin’ friends,” she growls at Jimmy. “So now that I have, you make fun of it?”

“Brenda,” Jimmy says, looking for all the world like she’s struck him.

“Maybe once you can refrain from makin’ me the butt of your little jokes,” Brenda says to Frank. “Sometimes it’s hard to shrug it off.”

“I didn’t know you felt that way,” Frank manages. “Brenda, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

And Brenda feels a little guilty now, because she honestly doesn’t mind most of the boys’ teasing. This is just an easy deflection and she knows it. Knows that after this they won’t say a word all night about her looking at her phone.

“It’s fine,” she says, sounding more amiable. “Let’s try and have a nice dinner together, okay?”

“Of course,” Jimmy says and Frank only nods thoughtfully. “Charlie’s going to meet us at the restaurant,” Jimmy informs them, looking down at his phone.

“Great,” Brenda smiles. “Let me just change into something cooler.”

She closes her bedroom door behind her and pulls her phone out of her pocket. Reads Sharon’s last text message and smiles to herself as she replies, _funny that in writing you’re still a horrible bitch._

 

. . .

 

Brenda doesn’t hear from Sharon for two weeks after the day Sharon flies back to LA, the two of them having traded text messages all evening. Even while Brenda was out to dinner with her family. Charlie had glared a few times when she caught Brenda on her phone, because Lord knows Brenda’s given Charlie enough grief about the same thing over the years.

It’s Saturday when Brenda finds herself staring down at her phone, debating whether to text Sharon. Because she doesn’t have work today and there’s no one here to give her grief for spending the whole day on her phone.

 _How are things back in LA?_ she texts. Annoyed that she can't come up something better than that.

She stares at her phone in anticipation, waiting for a reply, but none comes in five minutes. Or thirty. And two hours later, she throws her phone across the couch, annoyed with herself for caring so much.

She makes herself spend the whole day running errands she normally puts off until Sunday. She's pleased as punch when Charlie texts her, asking if she's interested in a slumber party.

"I don't know," Brenda says, calling Charlie. "I think I might have plans with another niece."

"I love that you're so lame," Charlie laughs.

"Just for that, you're buyin' the wine."

"Fair," Charlie sighs. "Fair."

"None of that disguntin' moscato stuff," Brenda tells her. "It isn't even fit for cookin' "

" _Please_ ," Charlie snorts. "As if you cook." And then Charlie hangs up on her.

That night Charlie sleeps in Brenda's bed, like always. They ate themselves into a coma, watched horrible movies that Brenda only agrees to see because Charlie insists, and are now stretched out in Brenda's bed, talking about Charlie's life.

"Eric wants to move in together," Charlie tells her. Brenda's eyebrows raise.

"Is that what you want?"

"It would be cheaper," Charlie shrugs, yawning.

"Not quite an answer," Brenda tells her.

"I like my own space," Charlie admits.

"Well Eric's a nice enough guy," Brenda says.

"But?" Charlie drawls.

"Honey, the rest of your adult life is gonna involve relationships and people makin' demands you may not necessarily want to agree to. It's better to figure out now when to compromise and when to speak up."

"Did you not want to marry Uncle Fritz?" Charlie asks softly, a while later. The question surprises Brenda so much that her mouth hangs open.

"Fritz was a good husband," Brenda says.

"Not quite an answer," Charlie frowns at her. Reaches over and flips off the bedside lamp.

Brenda's dead asleep when Charlie wakes her up with an persistent elbow against her side.

"Your phone," Charlie mumbles, “your phone is ringing."

Brenda's far enough past being a cop that she can, apparently, sleep through a ringing phone. But no phone call received in the middle of night has brought good news, so she shoots out of bed, grabbing her glasses off the nightstand.

It takes her a minute to find her phone on the dresser. By the time she does it isn't ringing anymore, still lit up with the displayed missed call. It's an LA number, one that seems vaguely familiar but isn't programmed into her contacts. And she calls it back, worrying as she stands there in her bare feet and over-sized Georgetown t-shirt, the lights still off and Charlie probably back asleep.

"Brenda?" she hears, after two rings.

"Sharon?" Brenda asks. "Sharon, is everything okay?"

"Oh God. You were asleep. I'm sorry I woke you up."

"You okay?" Brenda demands again, this time louder. If there's a dead body involved in this call, she wants to be told so now.

"Everything's fine," Sharon promises though her voice sounds off. And on the other side of the room, Charlie groans under the blankets.

"Hold on a second," Brenda whispers into the phone and goes into living room.

"Brenda, this is obviously a bad time," Sharon begins, sounding embarrassed, and Brenda shakes her head even though Sharon can't see it.

"My niece is in my room," Brenda explains. "We had a girl's night. I don't want to wake her."

"She sleeps in the your bed?" Sharon puzzles. Which Brenda finds odd, coming from someone with three children. The mother of a daughter.

"Do the Raydors not believe in cuddlin'?" Brenda asks, because she's tired and cross.

"I think it was more that the O'Dwyers didn't," Sharon admits after a short pause. Then says, "Brenda, go back to sleep. I forgot about the time change."

"I'm awake now," Brenda presses, sitting down heavily on the couch. "Talk to me."

"I told Andy. . .  About the DHS job."

This Brenda does not envy her. But she holds her tongue. Asks only, "and?"

"I just didn't want him to put in a transfer from the place that's been his home for almost fifteen years," Sharon sighs. "Not if I might be leaving anyway."

"That's noble," Brenda tells her.

"I don't think _noble_ is among the many adjectives Andy used to describe me today," Sharon laments. And Brenda would expect Sharon pissed as all hell about this, but instead she just sounds sad and tired. Like the way she looked sitting across from Brenda at lunch, that first day of her fly-out visit.

"Then he no longer sees you clearly, Sharon," Brenda tells her firmly.

"Thank you," Sharon says, so softly Brenda can barely hear her.

"What else?" Brenda asks her. Because she has a hunch.

"What do you mean?" Sharon puzzles. "Why do you think-"

"Because I like you and I'm glad you like me, but we both know that I'm no one's go-to girl for man problems," Brenda tells her flatly. "So what else is wrong that made you think to call me half after midnight, eastern time?"

"A serial rapist got acquitted this morning," Sharon admits, after a long pause.

"Ah," Brenda says.

"He - he assaulted four women and killed a fifth before we caught him. And I'd love to hang this on the DA's door, but they weren't working with much."

"It's still their job to make it stick," Brenda says.

"Not when the evidence is that thin. They pressed charges thinking he'd plead out, but there was never enough to convict him. . . I never found them enough evidence convict him."

Brenda doesn't say anything else here, because even though Sharon's voice is remarkably even, Brenda's pretty sure she's crying now.

"You would have gotten a confession," Sharon says.

This is the real reason she called, Brenda knows.

"Maybe," Brenda allows. "But we both know I would have ignored a whole heap of rules to do it."

"I've been looking victims' families in the eye for seven years now. You can't possibly think I care about ethics as much as I used to, Brenda."

It's an admission Brenda would have held up as a victory, years ago. But now Brenda just rest her head  against the soft fabric of  the couch. Wishes there was something she could say to make the woman on the other end of the line not feel powerless.

"You may feel differently about that later,” Brenda says. “With some distance."

"Did you?" Sharon asks, and Brenda breathes in.

"No," she admits. "No."

"I would have appreciated one of those famous Brenda Johnson lies on that score," Sharon tsks. Gives a brittle little laugh.

"Sorry," Brenda yawns. "Out of practice."

"Go back to sleep," Sharon tells her. "You're tired."

"You sure?"

"Positive," Sharon replies. "Thanks for talking to me even though I woke you."

It goes against every rational fiber of Brenda's wiser self to say it but she sighs into the phone, "promise me you'll call me tomorrow. M'kay?"

"I will," Sharon says immediately. "Not too early."

"Bye-bye now," Brenda says.

"Goodnight, Brenda Leigh."

Brenda goes back to bed, glad to see that Charlie's fast asleep again. She curls her body under the blanket and presses her face deep into the pillow. Tries not to replay any of that conversation over in her head.

But of course she does, repeatedly. Cheeks flushing hotly each time she gets to _'_ _goodnight, Brenda Leigh_ _'._ Thinks about the way Sharon’s voice sounded low and throaty when she said it.

 

. . .

 

Brenda’s out shopping the next day, a plus pink throw pillow in her hands, when her phone starts to ring.

“Hey,” Brenda says with a grin. She’s programmed Sharon’s landline into her contacts. Would recognize the number now even if she didn’t.

“Hello,” Sharon says back. “Is this a good time?”

“Perfect,” Brenda tells her. “I’m trying to choose accent colors for the condo and I don’t have any idea what I’m doin'.”

“Oh dear,” Sharon says, but Brenda can hear her chuckle.

“I picked out a few pinks thinkin’ _maybe_.”

“And nothing suits so far?” Sharon asks. Sounds genuinely interested, not merely humoring her.

“I’m lookin’ at a soft pink right now,” Brenda says, putting the pillow down “But I’m tryin’ to picture more of this color in the condo, and it feels very. . . .”

“Barbie’s dream house?” Sharon supplies dryly.

“Remind me why I’m askin’ for your help?” Brenda demands, hand on her hip.

“I’m sorry,” Sharon says. “But this is a momentous occasion. Brenda Leigh Johnson swearing off pink.”

“I still _like_ pink,” Brenda shoots back. “Although apparently I don’t fancy it as a decoratin’ choice.”

“What about yellow?” Sharon asks her, and Brenda paces down the long aisle.

“Yellow, huh?” Brenda repeats. Pulls down a large, rectangular pillow that’s the color of a sunflower. Maybe a smidge paler? 

“You like cheery colors,” Sharon states. “Yellow is cheery.”

“Hmm,” Brenda says. Contemplates how the pillow would look on her couch. “Do you think I can do different shades of yellow? Or do I need to stick with one?”

“You can get away with different shades,” Sharon tells her. “Especially if it’s in your only accent color.”  And Brenda glares at the empty story aisle, because it sounds an awful lot like Sharon’s trying not to laugh at her now.

Well. At least she’s trying.

“Hey,” Sharon says. “I meant to tell you that I’ll be coming out there at the beginning of July to look at real estate.”

“That’s a rough time to be doin’ anything in this city,” Brenda winces, “with the holiday.”

“I know,” Sharon sighs. “But it’s the only time I can get away from work.”

“Have you told them yet about the job?”

“Not yet,” Sharon says.  “I wasn’t sure before and even then the process is so long.”

“It takes forever,” Brenda laments.  “Better to wait.”

“Probably.”

“If you’re lookin’ at real estate, does that mean you’ve decided to take the job when they offer it to you?” Brenda asks, and there’s a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the call. Like maybe Sharon wasn’t expecting such a direct question, despite who she’s presently speaking with.

 “Yes," Sharon says firmly. "I have.”

Brenda’s alone in a massive home goods store, surrounded by pillows of every imaginable, ridiculous shade, but she closes her eyes and smiles. Smiles like when she sees Charlie after it’s been a while. Feels the way she used to when she was in a school and she’d be handed back a paper with an A on it. Carefully written praise waiting for her in pen.

“Brenda?” Sharon says, after Brenda’s been quiet too long.

“I’m here,” Brenda says. “I’m smilin’,” she admits.

“Me, too,” Sharon says. “Listen, I’ve got errands to run. But thanks for the chat. And good luck with your shopping, okay?”

“Thanks,” Brenda says, sad to hang up. “Bye-bye.”

The next day is a Monday and Brenda comes out of her bedroom, pleased to see the way her new yellow pillows look on couch in the soft light of the morning. She takes a picture of it and sends it to Sharon. Texts, _you were right about the yellow._

 _Pretty_ , Sharon tells her a few hours later. But that’s all she says. Brenda tries not to be disappointed because it’s a weekday and Sharon's probably caught a case.

Days go by and then a week, and Brenda doesn’t know when to text Sharon. Because so many phone calls in a short time would be rude and pushy, but texts are different and she doesn’t quite know the courtesy they require. She decides, sitting in a work meeting and her mind wandering, that maybe she’ll just let Sharon text her next.

 _What about this for your living room?_ Sharon texts, a few days later. Attached is a link to an online shopping site. When Brenda clicks on it a beautiful yellow area rug pops up. It’s softer in hue than her pillows, and there are a lot of other colors in the rug, but Brenda thinks about it for an hour. Pictures it sitting beneath her coffee table.

 _Maybe?_ Brenda replies, because she can’t quite decide.

 _I booked my flight to DC. July 1-5,_ Sharon tells her later that day.

Part of that is a weekend, Brenda knows, but the fourth falls on a weekday this year and all the government buildings will be closed. She debates whether she should take the third of the month off too, now that Sharon’s going to be in town.

 _Don’t book a hotel,_ Brenda tells her. _You can stay here_. And then when she rereads that it and it sounds pushy, she sends another text. _If you’d like_.

Sharon doesn’t respond for two hours, so Brenda’s on her couch debating what to watch on television when her phone finally chirps.

 _Alright_ _,_ Sharon agrees. And Brenda sees those three dots appear. Bites her lip and waits until another bubble brings, _thank you_.

 

. . .

 

Sharon’s in a bad mood when Brenda picks her up at the airport.

Maybe it’s the heat and humidity, or maybe it’s because Sharon had to leave LA in the middle of a case. But Brenda spots Sharon marching toward her car and immediately decides to forgo giving her a hug. She’d thought about it, navigating the traffic around Dulles, but then Sharon appears with a moody expression, red lips, and dark, perfectly tailored pants, and Brenda suddenly feels like she’s picking up someone other than the woman who’s been texting her about curtains and rugs for the last five weeks.

“I could have taken a cab,” Sharon tells her. And it’s the kind of thing Brenda would expect from Sharon because it’s clear Sharon doesn’t like to inconvenience people, but Sharon’s tone has a hard edge to it and suddenly Brenda feels like maybe it was ridiculous to come all this way at nine o’clock at night.

“It’s no trouble,” Brenda lies, pulling away from the curb. And she keeps her eyes on the road and only the road when Sharon makes a disapproving noise in the back of her throat.

Brenda doesn’t know how to make conversation now, not with Sharon like this. And Sharon doesn’t say a word, so they spend the entire thirty minute drive in silence.

Sharon’s suitcase is a small roller and Brenda doesn’t offer to help her with it when they get out of the car, because that would mean making eye contact or opening her mouth. And neither of those things is something Brenda particularly wants to do now.

“Charlie,” Brenda says, when she opens her door and sees Charlie hunting for something under her couch. “Honey, what are you doin’ here?”

“I left my black slingbacks here,” Charlie tells her, face under the couch. “I don’t know where.”

“Did you check my bedroom already?” Brenda asks, and Charlie stands up, freezing when sees Sharon.

“I forgot you had company this week,” Charlie offers immediately. Then forces a smile in Sharon’s direction.

“Nice to see you again, Charlie,” Sharon smiles warmly, and the dark, vexed creature from the car ride seems to melt way. “I’m Sharon.”

“I know,” Charlie says quickly, then cringes. “I mean, I remember. And Aunt Brenda talks about you a lot.”

It’s Brenda’s turn to cringe.

“Sharon,” Brenda says, "do you want me to show you the guest room?”

“Please,” Sharon nods. Rolls her little suitcase down the hallway, right on Brenda’s heels. “This is lovely,” Sharon announces, once inside the bedroom. And Brenda’s glad she thinks so because she’s spent a fair amount of effort decorating it on the lead up to Sharon’s visit.

Brenda goes back out to the living room and sees that Charlie’s found her shoes.

“Sorry to barge in,” Charlie apologizes. “Eric and I are going to dinner with friends of his and I realized I need these shoes.”

“That’s okay,” Brenda touches her arm. “It’s nice to see you.”

“Do you think this necklace is okay with this outfit?” Charlie asks her. Looks over at Sharon, who’s now emerged from the guest room.

“Is that what you’re going to wear to dinner?” Brenda gapes.

“What’s wrong with it?” Charlie demands. “Do I look bad?”

“No,” Brenda sighs. “The nice thing about being in twenty-five is that you look good in everything. Enjoy it while you can.”

“That’s not true,” Charlie defends.

“It is,” Sharon counters. “The only woman over forty who who looks good in baggy slacks and a huge, loose tops is Meryl Streep.”

“Ya know, that’s true,” Brenda decides, crossing her arms and looking at Sharon. “How does that woman do that?”

“I don’t know,” Sharon shakes her head. “But I’d pay a fair mint to find out.”

“You guys are ridiculous,” Charlie decides. “I’m getting out of here.”

“Have fun,” Brenda kisses her cheek, and Charlie throws a little wave to Sharon as she goes.

“She’s beautiful,” Sharon tells her.

“And smart,” Brenda says. “Which is far more important.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Sharon smirks. “Though maybe not tequila.”

“Never again tequila,” Brenda shakes her head. Feels her mouth go dry just at the memory.

“I know it’s late, but maybe we could watch a movie?” Sharon says. “Unless you’d like to go to bed soon?”

“A movie’s fine,” Brenda says. Hears her phone go off with a text and rummages around in her purse for it.

“Anything important?” Sharon asks, after Brenda’s on her phone a fair amount of time.

“Just Ed,” Brenda says. Smiles affectionately because Ed is always forgetting to tell her something until way after work. And he texts her rather than calls so as to impose less, but at this point Brenda really wishes he’d just call her because Ed takes so painfully long to type out a single sentence over text.

Brenda puts her phone back in her purse when she’s done. Looks over to see Sharon staring at her in odd, less than friendly way.

“Do you see a lot of Director Castillio _socially_?” Sharon asks her, and her tone is remarkably diplomatic. Remarkably without edge, given that she’s heard Ed talk about his wife and kids, and Sharon is now, so very politely and indirectly,  asking if Brenda has resumed her role as the other woman.

“Mostly holiday BBQ’s,” Brenda replies wearily. “He and his wife like to make a fuss.”

She doesn’t wait to see how Sharon reacts to this, whether she feels guilty for even implying something like that. Brenda just feels tired. And hurt. And the last thing she wants now is to spend two hours sitting on a couch next to Sharon.

“I think I’m gonna go to sleep after all,” Brenda says softly. “Fresh towels are in the second bathroom if you need them.”

She closes her bedroom door behind her because leaving it open would be an invitation. Goes into her bathroom and washes her face. Stares down at the thinning skin of hands and wrists and thinks about Will Pope. About falling into bad patterns.

Maybe it’s fair of Sharon to wonder a tiny bit, because it’s not like Brenda got on swimmingly with her bosses before. And she remembers now Sharon shifting uncomfortably whenever she had to watch Brenda and Ed chat away. But this is no kind of consolation, Brenda decides - the fact that Sharon doesn’t respect her as a person any more now than she did when they first met.

She falls asleep quickly even though she’s not expecting to be able to sleep for ages. Not when she feels like crying and she feels alone. Feels like that first week after Fritz went and died on her.

She isn’t sure why she wakes up, exactly. But she opens her eyes and can tell from the light that her bedroom door is open. That someone is standing in the middle of the open doorway.

“Brenda,” Sharon says, but doesn’t come farther into the room.

“I’m sleepin', Sharon,” Brenda tells her. Takes a fair amount of pleasure in saying that in the calmest tone she can produce.

“That was a horrible thing I said,” Sharon apologizes. Doesn’t beat around the bush or try to say that she didn’t mean it the way Brenda took it, though Brenda refuses to feel appreciative of this.

“It was,” Brenda agrees.

“I’m sorry,” Sharon offers. But Brenda angrily wonders what, exactly, Sharon is apologizing for having done.

“You once told me that I’d got my job the old-fashioned way,” Brenda reminds her.

“Not my finest moment,” Sharon breathes out.

“I would hope not,” Brenda turns over. “I would like to think few women revel in havin’ called another woman a whore.”

Brenda isn’t sorry for the low blow. Not sorry at all. Because Sharon’s side of things has always been low blows and Brenda can’t remember now why she wanted to be friends with a woman who apparently still hates her.

She hopes it’s enough to make Sharon go back to her own bedroom. They’ll just get through the next few days, and maybe Sharon won’t take the job now. Or maybe she’s so unhappy in LA that she still will. It’s another city and another bureaucracy, but Brenda’s sure she’ll remember how to dodge Sharon Raydor in hallways and not get stuck with her in elevators. It’s a small division in a big building. Brenda knows that she’ll adjust.

“Brenda,” Sharon says again, only now Brenda’s bed dips under Sharon’s weight. And Brenda’s already rolled into the center of it and she can’t see because she doesn’t have her glasses on.

All she can think is that she hopes Sharon doesn’t have her glasses on either, because then she won’t notice that Brenda’s about to cry.

Sharon puts a warm hand on Brenda’s arm before she pulls it way just as fast. Says, “I’m not accustomed to other people taking care of me. I’m not used to feeling like I’m not in control of my life.”

“I don't know how that’s my fault,” Brenda tells her.

“It isn’t,” Sharon says, sounding miserable. “I’m not sure. . . I’m not sure why, but even when you’re being kind you seem to bring out the worst in me.”

“Lucky me,” Brenda whispers.

She waits for Sharon to get up and leave, but she doesn’t. Sharon’s always been the braver of the two of them, Brenda’s long suspected.

“I read the card you sent," Brenda tells her. "With the flowers. After Fritz died.”

Sharon doesn’t say anything. Doesn't even fidget. 

“I didn’t read it until recently,” Brenda admits. “I couldn’t.”

“That’s understandable,” Sharon says. Shifts uncomfortably for the first time since she sat down.

“Who gave you that poem?” Brenda asks her. “The one you gave me in the card?”  Because Brenda’s thought about that poem a lot lately. Not the poem itself so much, but the slip of paper and why Sharon kept it for so long.

“A college professor,” Sharon tells her. “My math professor.”

“I didn’t realize you had a passion for math.”

“I like that it’s black and white,” Sharon says. “No normative judgements required.” She clears her throat, “the professor who gave me that was a stern woman that most of my friends hated. Not a popular subject to teach and she wasn’t an easy grader.”

“I’m guessin’ you didn’t hate her,” Brenda says, rolling over to look up at Sharon. Sharon’s face is just a blur to her and Brenda wishes she had her glasses on now.

“I did not,” Sharon allows. “And we kept in touch after I graduated. I think she saw something in me that reminded her of herself.” She shrugs, “I don’t know.”

“I used to look at you and see all the things I’m not,” Brenda admits.

“Brenda, I look at you and _still_ see all the things I’m not,” Sharon shakes her head. “I think maybe it’s why I’m such a bitch to you sometimes. . . I look at you and it's like I'm staring at the things I’ve never been brave enough to be.”

Brenda smiles. Stares at Sharon a long time because she's just so surprised by this.

“I’m not never going to sleep now,” Sharon declares, after a while.

“Me neither,” Brenda sits up.

“You want to watch a movie?” Sharon asks her, and Brenda puts on her glasses. Sees that Sharon’s frowning as she stares at Brenda’s ratty t-shirt and neon underwear.

“That last Meryl Streep movie is on Netflix now,” Brenda tells her. “The one where she’s doin’ that accent.”

“Sold,” Sharon says. “But put some shorts on or something for heaven’s sake.”

“Prude,” Brenda accuses, and Sharon gives that smirk that inspires perpetual fear and hope in Brenda. 

"Not by a long shot," Sharon calls over her shoulder, and Brenda freezes. Wonders what the hell Sharon means by that.

. . .

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

* * *

 

   
_Is it something you should know, did you never do your best?_   
_Would you be saved if you were brave and just tried harder?_

 - Shawn Colvin, "If I Were Brave"

 

* * *

 

Brenda wakes up a little shy of 8am feeling tired and achey, but she doesn’t let herself go back to sleep.

When Jimmy and Frank come to visit she’s always strolling out in the mornings to find one or both of them floating around her kitchen, coffee blissfully ready. And she doesn’t mind it,  looks forward to it even, because it’s nice to feel like someone's there, taking care of her.

But lying in bed now, she knows she wants to be the first one up. Gets up and washes her tired face thinking about last night. Sharon sitting on her bed, saying she thinks that Brenda's brave. Being right next to Sharon on the couch, watching that Meryl Streep film and listening as Sharon occasionally sighed. Sharon stifling a chuckle once, her hand pressed over her mouth like it’s the kind of thing a person ought to hide.

It should feel better this morning. Less tense. But Brenda spits her toothpaste out in the sink in a hurry, wanting to get dressed quick. Doesn’t want Sharon to get the drop on her here in her own home.

She half expects to open her bedroom door and find Sharon sitting at her dining table in full makeup, a coffee cup beside her as she charges through the crossword from the _Post_. But the living room and the kitchen are both empty, and anyway Brenda doesn’t even subscribe to a newspaper.

Brenda listens for any sign of Sharon in the guest room as she starts the coffee pot. Strains to hear footsteps on the wooden floorboards. But the whole condo is as silent as the grave, so Brenda just watches the coffee drip. Thinks about maybe having waffles for breakfast. Waffles with butter and that powdered sugar she has leftover from a few months back.

She doesn’t know whether to hold off on eating until Sharon wakes up. It seems like a rude thing to do, eating without her guest. But Brenda’s already hungry; she’s never been patient when it comes to food.

She compromises by making the waffle mix now so it’ll be ready to go the second Sharon appears. Fishes out her waffle iron from the back of a clutter, unorganized cabinet and plugs it in to warm up. Tosses the now empty instant waffle mix out and then stares down at it for a second. Pushes it deeper into the trash can and tosses a few other things on top of the folded cardboard box.

Half an hour goes by and then an hour and a half, and by now Brenda is reading things disinterestedly on her phone and feeling half starved. Rude or not, she’s having breakfast without Sharon. Grabs the idling waffle mix out of the fridge and hears a door creak open right after she sets it on the counter, the ceramic bowl clanking against the granite.

“Morning,” Sharon murmurs to her, shuffling toward the bathroom that’s off the living room. And Brenda doesn’t let herself stare even though Sharon hasn’t put on any makeup, is wearing a soft looking green robe with her hair piled up in a messy bun.

“Mornin’,” Brenda says back, and then the bathroom door clicks closed.

Brenda busies herself with pouring waffle mix into the iron. Decides to let Sharon just be in awe of her perfect timing.

“Is that waffles?” Sharon asks her, padding through the living room and then into the kitchen. Brenda can tell that Sharon fixed her bun into something a scoach more presentable. Maybe put on a touch of foundation, because no middle-aged woman's skin is that flawless when they’ve just woken up.

But Sharon isn’t wearing any other makeup and her hair still pulled up with a simple black elastic rather than the elegant metal clasps she used to favor at work. And it feels like being let in on a secret; being given free rein to walk around some place like Carnegie Hall when it’s entirely empty. Allowed to stand in the center of the stage and stare up into the rafters.

All the tension that’s been coiled up in Brenda’s stomach from the second she opened her eyes just disappears.

“Coffee too,” Brenda smiles. Feels vaguely accomplished when Sharon makes a little noise of contentment and stares greedily at the waffle iron.

“I’m sorry I slept so late,” Sharon says, sounding embarrassed. “The time change I suppose.”

“You’ll be needin’ the rest,” Brenda tells her. Amazed by her own diplomacy. “Doin’ anything in this city in the lead up to the Fourth is. . . not real fun.”

“I’m already dreading it,” Sharon admits. “Real estate is stressful in the best of situations and this. . . this is not the best of situations.”

“Could be worse,” Brenda shrugs at her. Feels a teeny, tiny stab of pain at Sharon making this move sound like an awful thing.

“It could be much worse,” Sharon agrees. Then adds, sounding hesitant, “Brenda, do you have any tea?”

“Um,” Brenda thinks. Stands on her tippy toes to peer into a cabinet of stuff she almost never uses. “Nothing caffeinated. Would you want mint?” Because Brenda only drinks tea when she has a stomach ache. Can’t fathom why anyone would choose tea over coffee for any other reason.

“Coffee will be fine,” Sharon waves her off. Pours herself a cup and then glances at the bowl of fruit resting on Brenda’s counter. “Do you want me to cut some of that up? For the waffles?”

“Okay,” Brenda says, although nothing and no one is getting between her and that powdered sugar. “Whatever you like.”

She’s relieved when Sharon picks up a peach, slicing it quickly and tidily over as plate and then discarding the pit. Brenda owns about three cutting boards but she would have to have to really search to locate even one of them. She just keeps buying new ones instead.

“Anything else you want me to grab?” Sharon asks her, when they relocate to the dining room.

“I’ll get it,” Brenda shrugs her off. Goes right over the pantry and digs out the powdered sugar.

Sharon raises her eyebrows when Brenda coats both waffles with a heavy dusting, but she's smart enough not to say a word. Brenda gets a few bites in when she notices Sharon looking across at her plate with something like envy.

“Do you know what part of the metro you wonna start your house hunt in?” Brenda asks her. Nudges the box of powdered sugar closer to Sharon and tries to keep a poker face.

“Probably the Virginia side,” Sharon says evenly. Picks up the sugar after a moment of contemplation and Brenda tries hard not to look smug. “Maybe Bethesda too,” Sharon adds. “Though it’ll really depend on what I can get for my condo in LA.”

“David’s mentioned the market’s in another slump,” Brenda says. Tries to tread lightly because so many people are touchy when it comes to talking about money.

“I would have made a lot more on it if I’d sold last year,” Sharon admits. “But what can you do?”

“You’ll find like it’s like any city,” Brenda sighs. Loads another big bite of waffle onto her fork. “The longer you’ll willin’ to commute, the more you’ll get for your money.” She shrugs one shoulder, “plus you’ll have captain’s pension on top of your salary, which’ll be a big help.”

Sharon looks like she's about to say something and then pauses, maybe reconsiders. "I like this neighborhood a great deal," Sharon says. "I poked around it a little bit, the last time. When I went to pick up dinner for us." When Brenda failed to answer her texts, she doesn't say.

"I always loved this part of Alexandria," Brenda admits. "But the only reason I could afford this condo was because of the life insurance."

Better to be blunt, Brenda decides. Get it right out there in the open so Sharon doesn't feel like she has to tiptoe around it.

"At least he planned for you," Sharon says. And Brenda knows that she's right, but still feels angry that Fritz never bothered to tell her.

"Mm hm," Brenda says and sips her coffee. "My husband died and I got to start callin' myself upper-middle class... Hurray."

She doesn't mean to sound so dark. It's just that pain sometimes sneaks up on her now. It's been enough time  that she doesn't think about it everyday, doesn't often look down at the finger where her wedding ring used to be and feel her mind stutter to stop. It gets to be a horrible, unpredictable surprise now when she's in the middle of doing something, steadily plugging along somewhere, and the wound rips open again. Feels tender and bruised like it's brand new, just because she smelled the wrong scent. Talked about the wrong the thing.

"We should go out tonight," Brenda says now, trying to sound brighter because Sharon's been giving her a pained look of concern. "If you don't have plans."

"I think I can squeeze you into my busy Washington social calendar," Sharon smirks, in that insufferably smug way that makes Brenda smile now. "I'm meeting with my real estate agent for a few hours today. Will probably poke around at a few properties. Only cursory stuff today. Should be done late afternoon."

"You already have an agent," Brenda nods. "That's good."

"We've only been in contact over email," Sharon admits. "But she's affiliated with a big company."

"If you decide to change horses, let me know," Brenda says. "I'll get you some numbers."

"Thank you," Sharon replies. "I hope to not need them, but this woman. . . seems to be on the perky side."

"She sounds perky over _email_?" Brenda drawls. "Well that should be fun for you. You lovin' perky people and all."

"Just for that," Sharon says, and stands up. "I'm going to leave you the dirty dishes even though you cooked."

"Rude," Brenda sniffs, but keeps on grinning.

"Thank you for breakfast," Sharon calls over her shoulder as she saunters back toward the guest bedroom. "The waffles were surprisingly good for being that instant batter stuff."

Sharon doesn't look back. Just closes the bedroom door behind her as Brenda's mouth hangs open.

. . .

“What are you going to do with your Saturday?” Sharon asks her, when she emerges showered and dressed. Brenda’s sprawled out on the couch, laptop on her propped up on her stomach.

“Light house cleaning,” Brenda says, which is a lie. “Maybe watch some movies.” The truth.

“Enviable,” Sharon says. Sounds tired before her day looking at properties has even begun.

Brenda considers offering to go with her. Knows that she and Sharon have wildly different tastes, but also thinks it might be easier not doing it alone.

She turns the thought over in her head before dismissing it. Remembers how prickly Sharon can get when Brenda tries to help her and decides it’s not worth the risk.

“That dress might be uncomfortable in this heat,” Brenda says instead. Sharon’s wearing a cream colored sheath dress now and Brenda can see from the couch that the fabric looks stiff and heavy.

“I’m going to spend most of the idea in an air conditioned car,” Sharon rejoins, and Brenda doesn’t push.

“Suit yourself.”

“I always do,” Sharon quips, scrolling through something on her phone.

“Hm,” Brenda says.

“She’s here,” Sharon announces, a few minutes later. “Time for me to go.”

“Good luck,” Brenda says, and follows Sharon to the door. Doesn’t even realize she’s doing it until she turns the doorknob.

“She said she’s in a Toyota,” Sharon murmurs, scanning the small parking lot.

“Yoo hoo!” a woman calls to them from a yellow car. A neon yellow car. “Sharon?”

Sharon makes a strangled sound and Brenda pivots away from the woman and the car, unable to stop her chuckle.

“I’m Missy!” the blond shouts. “It’s real nice to meet you Sharon. I have a great feelin’ about today.”

“Perky,” Brenda mutters. “I’m thinkin’ _perky_ was an understatement.”

“Yes,” Sharon calls stiffly. “Well. It’s nice to meet you, Melissa.” Turns on her heel to glare daggers at Brenda. “ _You_ I will see this evening.”

“Bye-bye now,” Brenda says sweetly. And then, when Sharon’s halfway down the walkway, “you girls are gonna have _so_ much fun, I know it.”

And Missy smiles and smiles at this. Looks for all the world like one of those pretty young women they choose to model for those stock photos that get shoved into picture frames.

Sharon knows better than to look back, apparently, so Brenda waves to Missy instead. Dissolves into actual giggles when the yellow car pulls out and Brenda sees the University of Mississippi decals on the back.

 _You were right about this dress,_ Sharon texts her two hours later, and Brenda’s surprised that Sharon felt the need. A little off balance that Sharon is doing so despite staying the night in Brenda’s home and having breakfast with her only a few hours earlier.

I do like to be right, Brenda replies.Then types, _how are you and Missy getting along?_

 _I now know the words to the University of Mississippi fight song_.  Brenda is torn between hoping that’s a joke and hoping it isn’t when she sees Sharon keep typing. Receives, _one of us is not going to make it out of this car, Brenda Leigh._

So not a joke then.

 _You of all people should know better than to admit that in writing_ , Brenda types out. _Now you can’t deny premeditation._

Sharon starts typing again, and Brenda slouches deeper into the couch. Puts her feet up on the coffee table. But then the three little dots disappear and a minute later Sharon just sends her a little smiley face that isn’t so much as smiling as baring it’s teeth.

That’s about right.

Sharon’s texts stop at some point, which Brenda hopes to be a good sign rather than an indication that she’s about to be an accomplice to murder. And she isn’t sure what to do beside frit away the day, waiting on Sharon to come back, so she does in fact do some cleaning.

She’s going through her desk in her office, recycling some things and filing papers away, when her phone chirps out in the living room. So she slides her glasses onto her head and pads into get it, only to realize she has to put her glasses back on in order to read the message.

_We’ll be done in about an hour if you’d like to meet somewhere. Maybe for dinner?_

It’s only four o’clock now, and while neither of them are young, they aren’t yet old enough to be eating dinner at 5pm on a Saturday.

Brenda’s typing out a snarky message to that effect when Sharon starts typing again. Sends her, _some place with alcohol_ _._ And then, _lots of alcohol_ _._

Brenda snorts. Asks Sharon where they’re at. Maybe she can meet Sharon somewhere close.

 _Fairfax_ , Sharon replies.

Hmm. Brenda taps her lip for a moment. Then texts back, _maybe you can metro back here and I’ll pick you up at the King Street station? It would mean less time in the car with Missy. . ._

 _Sold,_ Sharon agrees immediately.

 _You’ll need to change trains at Rosslyn_ , Brenda informs her.

 _I am perfectly capable of reading a color coded map,_ Sharon shoots back _._ And when Brenda reads that, hears that bitchy tone in her head, she clamps her mouth shut involuntarily. Throws her phone down on the couch and goes back to cleaning her desk.

 _Let me know when you’re at the Vienna station_ , Brenda makes herself text, forty-five minutes later.

 _I will_ , Sharon tells her. And then a minute later, _thank you_ _._

Brenda starts thinking about dinner now. Where she should take Sharon. And she doesn’t particularly enjoy going into the District proper on the weekend because of the crowds during the summer, but this close to the holiday the city is only going to swell more. So she grabs her laptop and googles a couple of her favorite restaurants to see who’s still taking reservations. Has zero desire to wait around for a table at a place that doesn't take reservations on a crowded, holiday weekend.

 _Change of plans_ , she texts Sharon. _We're having dinner in Adams Morgan. No sense in you coming all the way back here._

 _Alright_ , Sharon replies. And it occurs to Brenda that Sharon probably would have preferred to change out of that dress.

 _Unless you want to come back here first?_ Brenda types out.

 _Waste of time_ , Sharon texts back. How predictably pragmatic of her.

Brenda had planned to take the metro tonight because because doing so buys her time if she wants to have two glasses of wine with dinner. She gets to drink and then sober all the way up by the time she gets back to the King Street station and retrieve her car.

But now she's picturing Sharon tiredly trudging along in a dress that she's been hot in all day. Grumbles to herself as she changes into something more appropriate for dinner and then slips into the guest room to look for a change of clothes for Sharon.

She feels guilty about going through Sharon's things, but only a little. Because she wouldn't have to do this if Sharon weren't so damned pigheaded.  She doesn't pause to examine anything she shouldn't, zipping up the compartment that holds the thong underwear and the black lace bra as soon as unzips it and doesn't find anything helpful.

She finds a light blue dress that's flowy and light - way more comfortable than what Sharon's got on now. Hopes Sharon's wearing a bra that will work with this neckline because she is absolutely not going to text her to ask.

Traffic is as bad as she expected. Maybe worse. She'd planned to pick Sharon up at the metro station because it's a long, painful hike from there to the restaurant. But at this rate Sharon is going to beat her by a long shot.

 _Long delay on the red line_ , Sharon texts her. But Brenda doesn't read it until she's stuck at in intersection that leads into Dupont.

 _Stuck in traffic. Meet you in front of the Adams Morgan station in 10 minutes._ And then the car in front of her starts to inch forward and Brenda clicks her phone closed.

"I'm here," Brenda says when Sharon calls her, and Sharon finds her a minute later. Must be exhausted because she doesn't even appear to notice that Brenda's been idling in a no parking zone.

"Was traffic bad?" Sharon asks her, Brenda pulling back onto the packed road.

"Average," Brenda lies. "I brought you a change of clothes," she says. Gestures to the backseat and Sharon's neatly folded dress.

Sharon makes a relieved sound and Brenda feels awfully glad that went over well.

"Do I still have time to change?" Sharon asks.

"Plenty," Brenda replies. "Our reservation isn't for another hour and a half."

"What should we do until then?"

"Drink," Brenda says firmly. Adds with a small smile, "talk."

"Perfect," Sharon sighs. Closes her eyes and lets her head fall back against the headrest with a soft thud.

Brenda straight ahead to the line of cars that are barely moving. Smiles even though all she sees up ahead are lit up brake lights.

. . .

It’s a miracle that Brenda finds parking at all. Takes her a long time of circling two different streets after dropping Sharon off in front of a tiny wine bar Brenda's been meaning to try for ages.

Brenda’s parking job is just this side of being legal. Certainly enough to make a beat cop stop and stare, wondering if it’s worth writing the ticket; decide not to because it’s a holiday weekend and the driver could get very well get the ticket bounced out if they fought it.

She sighs, throws her keys into her purse and trudges the two blocks back to the wine bar.

“Your Merlot,” a server announces, placing a glass down in front of Brenda the second she sits down.

“A took a gamble,” Sharon says dryly. Sips her own white wine.

“Thank you,” Brenda breathes out. Chugs her first few sips as Sharon watches her and chuckles. “So did you fire Missy?” Brenda asks her. Feels more human, sitting in this comfortable chair with a glass of wine in her hand.

“No,” Sharon pronounces slowly. “She’s too good to fire.”

“A cheerful southern woman who stuns people with her competence,” Brenda squints. “Hmm. . .”

“Don't,” Sharon orders. But there’s no malice behind the word. “Though I do have to admit that I’ve now found an accent that’s more objectionable than _yours_.”

“There’s a slidin’ scale to these things,” Brenda says to her. “I’m glad you understand where Mississippi ranks, even as a Californian.”

“So what are we having for dinner?” Sharon changes the subject.

“Seafood,” Brenda replies. “There’s a nice place down the street that I like a lot. Yummy food. Dining room that’s nice without bein’ too stuffy.”

“Sounds good,” Sharon nods. “I’m already kind of hungry.”

Brenda isn’t quite hungry yet. She and Sharon had that late breakfast and Brenda’s usually a two meal a day kind of person. But her stomach is in fact empty, a fact she becomes painfully aware of as she gets about half her glass of wine down. Her head begins to spin a bit.

Sharon orders another glass of wine and Brenda asks for a glass of water. She really wants a diet coke, the quick boost of energy she associates with it, but water is a better idea so that’s what she gets. Makes herself steadily sip it.

“Do your kids know about the move yet?” Brenda asks, before the silence goes on too long.

“Oh yes,” Sharon says. “I told them when the on-campus visit came about and I knew it was a real possibility. That this was something I was genuinely considering.”

“How’d that go?” Brenda relaxes deeper into her chair. Hopes that she’s not bringing up a painful subject.

“None of them batted an eyelash,” Sharon snorts. “Here I was prepared for hysterics and ‘mom you can’t leave California’, and all I got was a bit of teasing by my son Ricky. Said he thought the only reason I’d ever leave the state was if part of it fell off into the ocean.”

“Snarky,” Brenda smirks. “Must take after your side.”

“In some things,” Sharon allows. Peers into her purse when her phone buzzes, but doesn’t linger there. Probably not work then. “He’s guarded like I am and doesn’t warm easily to people.”

“And yet I seem to recall you warmin’ so fast to me,” Brenda teases.

“Just as fast as you warmed to me,” Sharon shoots back, but there’s no ire behind it. Barely any annoyance even. Her voice is soft and hesitant when she starts speaking again. Says, “Brenda. . . When I vetted you for Chief of Police, I pulled up everything on you. Everything from Atlanta.”

“What were you expectin’ to find?” Brenda crosses her arms. Feels defensive and prickly even though she knows how thoroughly Sharon must have vetted her. Knew without a shadow of a doubt the woman had probably poked into everything she could get her hands on.

“Nothing in particular,” Sharon shakes her head. Sounds something like pained. “It was just the process. But then I looked through everything from Atlanta, really looked at it, and I was surprised to see that Will had passed you over for things you’d more than earned.”

“He passed me over twice,” Brenda says, “after the affair started. He was understandably scared about people findin’ out. He didn’t want to look like he was doin’ me any favors.”

“Or even giving you what you’d earned,” Sharon says solemnly.

“Ancient history,” Brenda shrugs. “Will got to take credit for my successes and I got to learn a lesson. Wasn’t a mistake I’d repeat.” She smiles bitterly, “others yes, but not _that_ one.”

Their server comes by and Brenda orders another glass of wine, because if they’re going to talk about Atlanta and Will Pope, she’s going to need it. Allows herself to stew in silence for a bit before she has the courage to make eye contact with Sharon again.

“Care if I ask why were talkin’ about Will Pope again?” Brenda asks her.

“Because,” Sharon breathes in. “I wanted to tell you that I knew even back- knew that you’d more than earned every promotion you ever got.”

“You mean you knew it when you told me I’d earned my job the old fashioned way,” Brenda clarifies.

“Which makes it even worse,” Sharon shakes her head. “I said it to hurt you. Make you angry. Said it even though I knew it was a lie.”

And maybe should be hurt or angry. Shouldn’t so easily accept Sharon’s belated apology. But Brenda sees the way Sharon is looking at her now, like she has no idea what Brenda could possibly see in her. Why Brenda would ever want to be friends with her.

Brenda knows exactly what the feels like. Has spent the better part of her adult life feeling like she's a disappointment to someone or someones. Only been happy enough the last few years if because there’s really no one left to disappoint.

“Well it worked,” Brenda acknowledges. “It did hurt me. Did motivate me.” Gives a sad smile and puts her own hand gently on top of Sharon’s. “So please don’t do it again.”

“Deal,” Sharon says softly. Exhales loudly. Looks relieved.

“We should get goin’,” Brenda says later, when they’ve passed another hour talking about absolutely nothing.

Sharon pays their tab and Brenda doesn’t fight her. Not when she’s planning on paying for dinner.

“Do you want to throw that dress in car?” Brenda asks, looking at the folded up linen dress Sharon has tucked under her arm.

“Maybe,” Sharon considers. But it’s silly not to when they have to walk pretty close to where the car is parked just to get to the restaurant.

“I’m down there,” Brenda nods at the street, and they walk the short ways together. And then Sharon stops dead when sees the way Brenda’s parked.

“ _What is it_ with you and rules?” Sharon asks and starts to laugh. Covers her mouth with her hands the way she apparently always does. Like she’s trying to push the joy back in.

Sharon laughs until her shoulders shake and her eyes well up, and Brenda feels a little defensive because it isn’t _that_ illegal of a parking job.

“It ain't entirely illegal,” Brenda huffs. But seeing Sharon laugh at something so small quickly stems all the piss and vinegar Brenda was about to swell with. She starts to smile and then slowly chuckle as Sharon bends over, laughing so hard it sounds like she can’t catch her breath. “I mean, what’s the point of a rule if you can’t bend it just a little?”

“ _God_. I missed you,” Sharon says, still laughing. Takes her glasses off now to wipe her watering eyes. “I didn’t know that’s what it was, maybe. But God I missed you after you left the LAPD.”

Brenda tries not to beam like an idiot.

“We’re gonna be late,” Brenda tells her, and Sharon quickly straightens up. Throws her dress in the back of Brenda’s car and then looks expectantly at Brenda. “Oh,” Brenda says. Realizes that Sharon doesn’t know where she’s going. “This way.”

The restaurant is full but they’re just in time for their reservation, so they slip in and are seated immediately.

“You were right about this place,” Sharon compliments. “Nice but not stuffy.”

Brenda mumbles her agreement into her menu. Wonders a bit here why Sharon's approval always makes her feel like she’s just driven home from work without hitting a single red light on the way.

“Is the lobster good?” Sharon asks her. “Have you had it?”

Brenda shudders before answering, “I’ve had the lobster risotto. It’s good.”

Sharon gives her a hard stare, and Brenda realizes she must have paled or something.

“I don’t like lobsters or crabs,” Brenda admits. “Not when they’re all whole. They freak me out.”

“They freak you out?” Sharon repeats slowly, her face perfectly expressionless.

“Skeletons ain’t supposed to be on the outside,” Brenda tells her. Makes a disgusted face.

“I think I’ll have the scallops,” Sharon says. “The sauce sounds interesting. Plus I wouldn’t want to order a big, bad lobster and make you scared.” Smirks into her sparkling water.

“I’d manage,” Brenda tells her. “You get what you want.”

And Brenda means it because she feels somehow braver tonight. Braver sitting with Sharon in a crowded restaurant with water glasses and white tablecloths, Sharon’s napkin already draped daintily across her lap.  

. . .

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

* * *

 

 _And everyone I know is gone_   
_And I don't even know myself_   
_I'm saving up_

\- The Staves, "Mexico"

 

* * *

 

 

 

Brenda’s condo feels empty and barren after Sharon goes back to LA.

Brenda tries to tell herself that this is normal, because she’s always a little sad when Charlie stays over and then goes back to her own apartment, her own life. Brenda always rattling around her newly quiet home, feeling off as she puts away dishes and stares at whatever article of clothing Charlie's inevitably left behind.

But this is different. This feeling is somehow different, and rather than fading away, it only burrows deeper inside Brenda. Starts to feel like something itchy and painful. Makes Brenda feel restless and punchy at work, and vaguely sad at home. Irrationally furious at the man in front of her at the grocery store, fumbling with cash at the self-checkout kiosk rather than just swiping his card like any half-witted person would.

She tells herself that she’s just sick of summer. Tired of the heat and humidity, and the constant throng of tourists in the metro stations who plant themselves in the middle of the damned escalators rather than standing to the right or walking on the left.

But then one day Brenda’s phone buzzes with a text message from Sharon, and she feels herself grinning even though she’s still work, going over budget numbers with Ed and fighting the beginnings of a headache.

 _Sometimes when I’m at work I worry that I’m in a marriage, and that marriage is with Provenza_ ,  Sharon confesses. Punctuates it with a little yellow face that looks maybe startled? Brenda squints down her nose, through her glasses, deciding that yes, that face is supposed to be startled.

And Lord, Brenda remembers those days. Doesn’t miss them much anymore, though oddly enough she does kind of miss her late night chats with Provenza. She tells Sharon as much much too, staring down at her phone with anticipation as she sees Sharon start typing her reply.

“I don’t know who’s on the other end of that phone, making you smile like that,” Ed says suddenly. “But I like them.”

And it’s an innocent comment, a sweet thing to say really, but it makes Brenda’s face burn hot with embarrassment and she shoves her phone back into her purse. Plasters a disinterested look on her face and shrugs off the way Ed’s staring at her now with a soft smile on his face.

“Four percent,” Brenda says somberly, rereading the line item she and Ed had been talking about before she saw Sharon’s text. “That’s better than we were hopin’ but still not great.”

Ed nods. Gives her a strange look before he digs back in with her.

She doesn’t text Sharon the rest of the day, which isn’t that uncommon. Sharon doesn’t sail home at 5 o’clock like Brenda does most days, and getting anything but random texts from Sharon at odd hours is pretty rare, except for on the weekends.

And Brenda chides herself for being so keenly aware of where her phone is. Gets annoyed with herself for thinking about how it’s slipped into the small pocket of her bag, her bag having been slung across her bed the moment she entered her bedroom. Dropped her purse exactly where she always does, right before she took off her bra and felt a million times better about life.

She keeps thinking about texting Sharon back, but each time she does, she remembers Ed’s comment. Feels old and pathetic for clinging to this new friendship in a way that’s probably unhealthy. Certainly silly, because it’ll be nice to have Sharon in DC, and it’s good to have a female friend to tell things to, but Brenda knows what this is. Realizes that she begrudgingly moved in with Fritz, and then got used to having someone. Knows that she looks at Sharon, who’s about to move to a new place and  struggling in a way that’s uncharacteristic, and sees an opportunity.

And that’s not right, Brenda tells herself now. Angrily grabs some cookies out of the cupboard.

Just wrong that she’s latching onto Sharon because she’s afraid to be alone.

She eats the whole damn bag of cookies and doesn’t feel any better. Feels worse actually, as now she has a stomachache on top of her headache. Which was an outcome that was predictable and yet one studiously ignored until the second it arrived.

Brenda turns the television on and switches to the Food Network. Closes her eyes as a rail-thin woman talks about how to make a cheesecake that won’t crack as it bakes. Thinks about why she’s always grabbed greedily for things she has no business reaching for anyway.

Knows without a shred of doubt that if she tried to make that cheesecake, it would crack right down the center.

. . .

“Did I wake you?” Sharon asks softly.

Brenda isn’t asleep when Sharon calls, though she is in bed. She’s got her laptop open next to her and has just finished buying a flight for her daddy when her iPhone started to ring.

“No,” Brenda tells her. It’s barely nine o’clock. Too early to go to bed even on a weekday, let alone a Saturday. “No, I’m awake.”

“Oh,” Sharon says. Adds, “okay.”

“How was your week?” Brenda asks immediately, because it’s been days of her barely texting Sharon, but hearing Sharon’s actual voice now feels like a gift.

“Unsurprisingly, several citizens of Los Angeles were murdered,” Sharon says. A little dryly, but it sounds like her heart isn’t really in the joke.

“You alright?” Brenda asks immediately. Wonders if another murderer got off; if maybe Andy Flynn is punishing Sharon for being the one to leave Major Crimes, giving her angry looks and pained silences.

“It’s been a weird week,” Sharon admits. “I was going to call you this morning, but thought maybe you were busy. So I just ran errands. Called my kids.”

_Maybe you were busy._

‘Since you didn’t respond to my texts,’ Sharon doesn’t say. Doesn’t even sound angry or accusing. Just keeps talking to Brenda in a tone that makes her sound like a flatter version of herself.

“Your kids answer actual phone calls?” Brenda asks, trying to sound light.

“Rusty does,” Sharon replies. “If only because I put the fear of God in him about that, back when he first lived with me. . . The other two just let it ring out to voicemail and then send me a text about, oh, a second later.”

“Charlie does that,” Brenda smirks. “She stopped doin’ it with me because I told her it was rude and I don’t buy rude people dinner.”

Sharon chuckles before she pronounces, "bribery." Sounds approving.

“It worked,” Brenda says. Stretches back against her pillow and flexes a cramping foot.

“I’ll have to borrow that line,” Sharon muses. Sounds cheerful and light in a way that she didn’t when Brenda first answered the call.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t real communicative this week,” Brenda says abruptly. Because she is sorry now. Feels like a real bitch in fact, now that she thinks about it.

“You were busy,” Sharon tells her. Just hands her the easy out on a silver platter.

“It’s been an off week,” Brenda admits instead. “I don’t know how to explain it but I’ve just been feelin’ . . . not right.”

“Me too,” Sharon breathes, and Brenda hesitates when she hears that sound. Wonders if Sharon’s standing in her kitchen or maybe sitting on her couch. Wishes she knew what Sharon’s home even looks like. “I thought maybe I was catching a cold or something, but it’s not that. It's just this odd feeling.”

“Maybe it’s stress about the move,” Brenda guesses. Because honestly she’s never been great at being the kind of friend who just listens and nods thoughtfully at all the right times. But she’s had those friends. She’s certain that if she tries a bit more, she can be the kind of friend to Sharon that David has been to her.

“Well, there’s that,” Sharon allows. Gives something like a groan. “My real estate agent here told me that two condos in my building went up for sale this month, and both of them are on higher floors than my unit.”

“I’m gonna guess from your tone that their askin’ price is within strikin’ distance of what you wanted for your place.”

“One of them is a short sale,” Sharon says, and Brenda winces. Those prices aren’t the kind of rock bottom ones that foreclosures bring, but they’re not far off either.

“How bad?” Brenda asks.

“Bad,” Sharon says. “Bad enough that I’m probably going to have to sit on this place for a year, rent it out.”

Brenda knows Sharon wants a place with a yard. She’s been living in a condo for years now, and it was ideal while Sharon’s been a cop, working long hours and late nights. But Sharon misses having a yard. Spent a lot of her visit poking into small houses with modest yards, out in Fairfax and then McLean. And sure, she could buy something further out, maybe something that isn’t exactly what she wanted, but Sharon’s smart to wait. Levelheaded to sit on her condo in LA and get a temporary rental here in DC until it’s time to sell.

“Not what you wanted,” Brenda says, unnecessarily. Tries to think of something comforting, but honestly can’t.

“That’s life,” Sharon says. Sounds tired but not crushed.

“Hey, I wore that dress you and Charlie made me buy,” Brenda tells her, deciding a change of subject is probably for the best.

“It didn’t take a great deal of convincing,” Sharon scoffs.

It really didn’t. Charlie and Sharon did half drag her into the store, because the three of them had been coming from Sunday brunch and the last thing Brenda wanted to do was try on clothes when she was stuffed full of food. But it was a store Brenda knows and shops at often, and when Sharon handed her something to try on, Brenda decided to save the argument. Ended up liking the dress immediately when she looked at it in the mirror.

“I’m gonna have to have it taken up about half an inch,” Brenda admits. Decides to hand Sharon something that is sure to improve her mood for the whole conversation “You were right.”

“I’m sorry,” Sharon says innocently, “could you please repeat that? I couldn’t hear you.”

“You heard me fine, Cap'n Raydor,” Brenda narrows her eyes.

“I did,” Sharon sighs happily. “But I still think you should say it again. . .  I’m pretty sure an angel gets her wings every time you admit that you are _wrong_ and I am _right._ ”

“When was the last time someone told you that you’re a bitch?” Brenda grouses, even as she smiles.

“Yesterday,” Sharon says.”If a patrol officer mumbling it behind my back counts.”

“Now there’s something I don’t miss,” Brenda pulls a face.

“Mm hm,” Sharon agrees.

“At least the fine people at Homeland Security call me a bitch in the privacy of their offices, with their doors closed," Brenda decides.

“Like people with manners,” Sharon plays along.

“People who were raised right and proper by their mamas,” Brenda agrees.

Sharon laughs and Brenda feels pleased with herself. Happy in a way that she hasn’t been for days and days.

“I should let you go,” Sharon tells her, sounding reluctant.

“Oh,” Brenda says. “Alright.” Adds lamely, “well thanks for callin’.”

“Sure,” Sharon breezes. “Have a good night, Brenda.”

The call ends and Brenda feels better and yet somehow worse. Oddly wired now, like maybe she had caffeine on an empty stomach.

 

. . .

 

Brenda tries to be a better friend. Realizes that she must be real be bad at having girlfriends, because every time Sharon tries, Brenda only tries for a little while before she decides to up and stop trying altogether. Basically gives up and makes Sharon do all the work.

So she sends random texts to Sharon throughout the week, mostly funny ones but sometimes serious. Tries not to feel dejected whenever Sharon doesn’t text back because Brenda knows Sharon’s working a case.

“Was I always bad at havin' girlfriends?” Brenda asks Jimmy when he Facetimes her.

They talk every weekend, sometimes during the week as well. There have been a lot of extra phone calls this month because Brenda flying their daddy out to DC always equates to Clay Johnson preemptively complaining about cities and city dwellers for the entire month leading up to it. Usually to whomever will listen.

“Better than New York I suppose,” their daddy always reluctantly admits about DC. “Fair sight cleaner.”

Normally Brenda has to hear about _that_ for days, both from Jimmy and from Frank.

“Hello to you too, Bren, ” Jimmy rolls his eyes. But Brenda doesn’t feel guilty about the non-sequitur because she’s been thinking about this for days now.

“I feel like I always had a ton of girlfriends when we were younger,” Brenda says. “So it’s not like I was always bad at it.”

“Who said you were bad at it?” Jimmy asks, probably trying to catch up.

“No one,” Brenda says. “I dunno. I just feel like I don’t know how to be friends with women anymore. But how is that even possible?”

“You were surrounded by men for years,” Jimmy shrugs, “because of your job.”

“I even like women more as a species than I like men,” Brenda puzzles. Because she doesn’t know why this is so hard. Doesn't know why she gets so worried about screwing up her friendship with Sharon when she never thinks twice about what she says to David or even, honestly, to Ed.

“A point of taste we’ll have to agree to disagree on,” Jimmy deadpans, and Brenda glares at him.

“I’m bein’ serious,” she tells him.

“Honey, what is _wrong_ with you?” Jimmy asks her.

"Sharon," Brenda says. "I feel like I'm bein' a real bad friend to her."

"This again," Jimmy says and looks bored. _Bored._

"I just wonna be a good friend to her because she's doin' a real hard thing," Brenda tries to explain. 

"Well why do you even think you're being a bad one?" Jimmy asks her, and Brenda shakes her head.

"Maybe I'm not," she shrugs, rather than replying honestly. Because all of a sudden she doesn't want to talk about how hard she thinks about her texts to Sharon, or why she stopped sending Sharon those little cards a few years back. Doesn't think admitting to any of that is going to make her sound anything other than crazy.

"Well, to answer your question," Jimmy says, "yeah, you always had a lot of friends. Until I guess maybe you got that job with CIA. I'm guessing it wasn't particularly easy to go from living in a sorority house with a dozen women to having a job that involved lying about your everyday life."

It was brutal, actually. Not hard to sink herself into her work because, at the end of the day, work was the thing that made her happy for a long time. But it was still difficult to go from being a person who left her bedroom door unlocked so girls could pop in and out, to being someone who felt odd making small talk with strangers at Starbucks. Because if the conversation went longer than thirty seconds, it was probably going to necessitate some kind of lie.

"Bein' pretty and gettin' promoted often didn't exactly endear me to many women after that," Brenda says instead. "Sad that it works that way, but it's the truth."

"This is cute," Jimmy says out of no where, and Brenda squints in confusion. "You trying. It's cute."

"Mean," Brenda pouts.

"Mama would be proud, I think," Jimmy says and smiles at her like maybe he means that.

"I didn't clean out my fridge before Sharon came to visit," Brenda tells him. "So if she's watchin' than I'm pretty sure she's appalled."

And Jimmy laughs now, but it's a sad laugh. It feels good to talk about their mama but also aches. Always will.

"So what are you going to do with Daddy when he comes out?" Jimmy changes the subject.

"Oh, the usual. Take him out to restaurants he'll complain are overpriced. Let him watch his sports. . . Remind him that DC is much cleaner than New York when he complains about the metro."

"Rude," Jimmy says to her.

"Yeah," Brenda smiles "Very."

 

. . .

 

August comes and Brenda feels hopeful, because August is a month that she always clings to in her head. Thinks of it as the very last month that's abysmally hot.

She knows this isn't exactly true, because temperatures don't start to fall until the end of September, and even then it's a warm month. But that last week of September is usually a comfortable one (sometimes the last two if they're lucky), and so Brenda lets herself cling to this idea of August as some kind of finishing line. The transition from being in hell to being in non-hell.

"I'm not gonna complain about the cold this winter," she tells Ed, when they come back from a meeting on the other campus. Brenda's blouse is now uncomfortably stuck to the small of her back and she took off her blazer an hour into the day.

"Me either," Ed agrees, his tan face kind of red and his forehead still beaded with sweat.  "They keep saying we're no where near the records for August, but that can't be right. That can't be right. It's miserable out there."

"Miserable," Brenda parrots. Fans herself with the folder that's in her right hand.

"I was going to go get lunch, but I'm not going back out there. No way," Ed shakes his head. "I'll just wait until I get home. Have an early dinner."

"I brought some leftover pasta," Brenda tells him. "There's enough for both of us."

"Thank you," Ed says, gulping his bottle of water. But the truth is Brenda's not big on leftovers anyway, and she'll just give Ed the whole thing. "I don't a believe a word of what anybody says about you," he taunts now. "You're a nice lady."

"To live in the world where I am a nice lady," Brenda muses. Pulls at her sticky blouse as the hallway splits again, Ed giving her a wave as he trudges away to his office.

Brenda has a lot to get through today but doesn't barrel through at her usual pace. She's been staying late this week, waiting out the heat and misery of rush hour by plugging away at work in her office. Says goodbye to a few people when 5 o'clock comes. Smiles when Ed knocks on her door on his way out, Brenda throwing him a quick smile over her laptop.

 _I'm starting to think this move is some kind of divine test of my sanity,_ Sharon texts her, about twenty minutes later. And Brenda frowns at this, because Sharon's texts are often sarcastic and sometimes brutally honest, but they are never this. . . dramatic.

 _I'm at work still_ , Brenda texts her back, _but I'm not busy_. _I can call._

She would just call Sharon herself, but there's no telling where Sharon's at or what she's doing. It's more than likely that she's out a crime scene or pouring over paperwork in a room filled with other people. Maybe sitting with Provenza in a Crown Vic.

Her phones starts to vibrate with a call and Brenda answers it before it even starts to properly ring.

"What's goin' on?" she asks Sharon, skipping right over 'are you okay', because clearly Sharon is not.

"Everything is awful," Sharon tells her. "Ricky's apparently decided he's belatedly upset about the move, and the real estate agency is going to charge an arm and a leg to manage my condo when I rent it. And Andy is being kind enough to remind me exactly how big of an _asshole_ he is capable of being, which is why I ended things with him to begin with!"

Okay. So that is a lot of awful. But as upset as Sharon sounds, her voice is oddly hushed. Not quite a whisper but certainly not her normal speaking volume on the phone.

"Are you in your office?" Brenda guesses.

"I was just going to text you," Sharon defends, sounding guilty. "But then you responded immediately and you said that I could call -"

"Hey," Brenda cuts her off. Tries to sound soothing. Gets up from behind her desk and closes her own office door. "That was just a question."

"Was it this awful for you?" Sharon asks her. "When you left? Was it this awful?"

"Well," Brenda sighs. "The awful part was more before that. When I was still draggin' myself to work at the DA's Office and tryin' to act like nothing had changed. But yeah, there was a period there when everyone kept awkwardly sayin' goodbye to me and my house wasn't packed. And that was kind of awful, too."

"I didn't get to come by," Sharon says. "I remember that. I was going to but I got stuck talking to Pope or something."

"Taylor," Brenda corrects, because she remembers it. She remembers everything about that. "But you sent Andy to track me down with a real lovely card."

"I did," Sharon sighs. "I threatened him within an inch of his life about finding you before you left for the day."

"He bent your card," she tells Sharon. Sure that this is the kind of thing that'll just chafe Sharon to no end. A small, safe thing for Sharon to get upset about. "That pretty card you picked out for me and Andy wrinkled it right across the corner with his big ol' hand."

"What a fucking asshole," Sharon says now, a little louder.

"Way to pick 'em," Brenda says lightly, and Sharon huffs like maybe she's starting to smile now.

"I have to go," Sharon tells her.

"Okay," Brenda replies.

"I don't want to. But I closed the blinds to make this call, and if I stay in here any longer people are going to start to wonder what's wrong."

"I understand," Brenda says.

"Well you _should_ ," Sharon shoots back, sounding annoyed. "Since you're the one that allowed them to give you an office that's a damned fishbowl."

"Pleasure talkin' to you, Cap'n Raydor," Brenda retaliates calmly. Not one bit upset.

"I'll call you when I'm home," Sharon promises, quietly again.

"Please do," Brenda says.

She waits exactly one hour before she texts Sharon, _maybe I'd have worried more about my fishbowl of an office if that obnoxious woman in FID wasn't always following me around._

She doesn't wait for a response, knows Sharon's probably too busy to text her now. Is more than happy to wait for the retort she's probably in for when Sharon calls her later tonight.

So she ploughs through the rest of her work, and later packs up her stuff for the evening. Takes a deep breath when she gets downstairs and is standing in front of the main entrance to the building, because she'd dreading going outside to face that long, hot walk to her car. But of course the expectation is worse the thing itself. Before she knows it, she's in her car with the AC blasting in her face, a voice from NPR droning on in a soothing monotone.

It's past the brunt of peak of traffic, so the drive is better than average. But Brenda starts to think about Sharon again now. Thinks about how much harder this is for Sharon than it was for her, because Sharon has kids, and a job she's not emotionally checked out of, and no pile of insurance money to throw at problems and make them go away.

Sharon isn't overly specific about numbers and budgets, though she isn't someone who shies away from money talk either. She was, for intents and purposes, a single parent for a long time and the sole supporter of her household. Her condo is probably a nice one, but isn't paid off, and now she's trying to sell at a less than ideal time. Plus it's not like renting it out will net her any extra income, because she's just going to be dumping that back into whatever place she has to rent in DC.

And Brenda knows this isn't some huge crisis. Clicks her turn signal on and sighs to herself about First World problems. But still, she wishes this wasn't so hard for Sharon. Wishes maybe there was something she could do to make it easier.

It's late when Sharon calls her, half past eleven, and normally Brenda would be asleep now. But she sent a text to Sharon not long ago, telling her she's still awake.

"Did you wait up?" Sharon asks, sounding apologetic.

Brenda marvels at how soft Sharon sometimes sounds on the phone. Wonders if maybe they could have been friends back in LA, if she hadn't been the thorn in Sharon's side. If Sharon ever called her like this, sounding soft and tired and worried that she kept Brenda awake.

"I wanted to talk to you," Brenda says simply. "I've been thinkin'."

"That sounds dangerous," Sharon teases, but Brenda doesn't take the bait. Won't tease back when she's about to say something so serious.

"Sharon, maybe she should stay here with me instead of rentin' something until your place there sells," Brenda says. Hears a loud exhalation on the other end of the line but doesn't pause to wait for Sharon to say anything. Not yet. "Think about it," Brenda barrels on. "You could just dump the rental money from the LA condo into savings, use it toward your house. And you like this neighborhood, you said so yourself. And it's not too far from work."

"Brenda," Sharon says eventually. "That is an unbelievably kind offer, but that's too much. Way too much for me to accept from you."

"I mean it, Sharon," Brenda says doggedly. "I mean it. It's one thing if you think you can't live with me because you'd hate it-"

"I'm not saying that," Sharon interrupts her. "Brenda, I'm not saying that at all."

"So then consider it," Brenda presses. "Please just consider it."

"It's too much," Sharon repeats, and Brenda wonders what she means now.

Too much for whom? Too much of what?

Probably too much of Brenda in Sharon's face, but if that's the case, Sharon's going to have to suit up and say it in those words. Brenda's not going to back down otherwise.

"Not too much for me," Brenda tells her. "I liked you bein' here. It felt weird when you left. I even told you that I felt off, remember?"

"That's not quite what you said," Sharon points out, but sounds soft again. Affectionate. Maybe this is the way Sharon sounds when she talks with her kids; when she calls Rusty and he has the good sense to pick up.

"Because I didn't want to sound crazy," Brenda admits. "Or needy. Or whatever. But my whole point is that this is not too much for me to offer, Sharon. So if you decline, please let it be for a better reason than that."

"I'm going to have to think about it," Sharon tells her, sounding torn. "Can I think about it without offending you?"

"I think we're little past gettin' offended easily, don't you?" Brenda asks her. Rubs at her forehead and smiles despite herself.

"I guess we are," Sharon agrees.

"I'm gonna go to bed now," Brenda decides, looking at the clock. "But go ahead and think about it. Take as much time as you want."

"Thank you," Sharon says, in that way of hers that's automatic. But then she gives a long sigh before she adds, "thank you, Brenda Leigh. You are very sweet."

"Bye-bye now," Brenda says into the phone, not sure whether to say 'thank you'. Ends the call and puts herself to bed because she's already good and tired.

 

. . .

 

Something beeps on her nightstand and Brenda fumbles for her alarm. But she hits the button there and then hits it again, and the sound still keeps on _going_.

She opens her eyes and grumbles. Realizes after a few seconds that it's not her alarm but her phone, and that noise isn't even a beep at all. Grabs for it and sees that it's Sharon calling her, and Brenda can't help being angry now because she looks at the time and sees that it's not even six yet.

They just got off the phone six hours ago and the sun hasn't even begun to rise.

"Brenda?" Sharon asks, and Brenda makes an irritated noise. Who else could it possibly be when Sharon knows good and well who she called?

"I'm gonna assume that if you're callin' me this early, it mean you're standing over Andy's dead body and you don't have a plan," Brenda groans.

"I thought about your offer," Sharon tells her. Completely ignores a perfectly good joke at Andy's expense. "I thought about it and I accept."

"Huh?" Brenda mutters. Rubs at her eyes and wishes Sharon had called her when it was at least _a little_ light outside.

"I'll stay there until my place sells," Sharon explains. "I'll stay with you. Until I buy a place."

"Oh," Brenda manages. "Oh. Well. Good. . . Good. . . Alright then."

"Sorry to wake you again," Sharon apologizes. "Go back to sleep. I'll text you later."

But the call ends and Brenda doesn't flop back down on her pillow. Stares instead at her phone and goes back through Sharon's side of the conversation in her head, and then their conversation from last night.

There's no use trying to go back to sleep, because by the time she gets tired again, her alarm is about to go off. Drags herself into the bathroom and starts her shower. Tries to tell herself that living with Sharon will be like back in college, living in that sorority house.

A little different maybe, but not harder. Only for a year.

The water heater gives out, the shower running from hot to cold before Brenda's managed to halfway convince herself that all of that is true.

 . . .

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
